Detective Ghoul
by Ecatar
Summary: Haise Sasaki and a disguised Touka Kirishima work together as third rank CCG investigators following Haise's demotion from leader of the "Q" team. Tracking down low ranking ghouls, can a deep friendship forged in the fires of circumstance be rebuilt, and where exactly is Kaneki Ken?
1. Chapter 1

Tomoe Ayama and Haise Sasaki don't know each other much at all, and for the most part, it feels the way it should. To be partnered with another person you've never met, well, it just feels sort of weird, not entirely in a bad way, but, not entirely in a good way either. Yet, for brief moments, it feels like they've known each other for quite a long time. These moments aren't out in the field, or when they slice up ghouls. No, it's more like, if they glance at each other from the left corner of the right most room in the CCG headquarters, they feel the weight of some previous existence they lived out together. Though, this existence is probably one of those things that goes unshared between any two people because tension feels pretty damn good, and well, it's a little weird to tell someone else that you've lived a past life with them, isn't it?

The systematic restructuring of the CCG and a demotion that's made waves across the brows of Ghoul Investigators in Japan has left Haise Sasaki, one part ghoul and two parts human, a third rank investigator. Sometimes he wondered if that title really meant all that much, considering the amount of risk involved didn't really change in the least. He continued to think this until he heard directly from Akira Mado that he'd be removed from the "Q" squad, not just as their leader, but entirely from the project. Another investigator from special investigations would be coming in to "handle" the group's, "reckless behavior and lack of sensible judgment in the face of a race threatening the integrity of human kind." Okay. That sounded pretty serious. He probably deserved to be removed. His inefficiency as a leader and inability to motivate his subordinates to survive as a unit made him a pretty lousy investigator. Just about the only thing he could do was show his back to them, more like a bodyguard and less like a father.

That's where his mind seems to twist though, in a lot of unfair ways. Fathers always feel like fathers, regardless of how crappy they are at it. Haise Sasaki felt like a terrible father, but a father none the less. He felt sick to his stomach when he thought about wanting to get back to his babies. They deserved considerably better than a walk-on Ghoul Investigator who hadn't graduated from the academy, and, well, they probably needed a more stern person. Haise was considerably nicer than most people. He sort of hoped Mado would take over the role. She seemed like a pretty kick ass mother. More like a mother who happens to kick your ass, but that's not so bad.

Yes, Haise thought all these things about the CCG's decision to remove him from his post as the leader of team Q, and he did indeed hope that a leader would emerge to guide those ambitious kids into an era of ghoul and human peace, rather secretly. But, there's always a but. Before he'd reported to his new office on the first floor of the CCG headquarters to the left of the RC scanners, and, well let's face it, by to the left, he meant as far left as one might go in a door hidden by some cardboard boxes, he'd felt a little anxious. He hadn't received any word on his new partner, and that wasn't all the strange; third class investigators were a special case, so not many existed, and second class investigators were tied up helping groups like Team Mado with the nutcracker case. He might not get a partner, to be honest, considering he'd probably be in charge of some lower level ghouls who looked for fresh lunch once a month in first ward back alleys. Even so, with all the logic he could muster, he still felt like he hadn't gotten a kick in the ass in a while. If there was anything Akira Mado had taught him, it was that if life hadn't given you some alarming tragedy in the past 24 hours, expect a delivery straight to your gut. That seemed a little too pessimistic, though. After all, a new partner seemed kind of like an adventure to Haise. It made him smile a little bit when he passed by cardboard boxes. There were funny looking pictures of a rabbit with a big X.

Touka Kirishima wasn't exactly in good spirits. Halcyon days spent in the 20th ward, where food was packaged up and coffee cups abundant enough for humans and ghouls alike, had shifted into a nutcracker mess surrounding the ever present CCG headquarters. Ghoul Investigators like Juuzou Suzuya, a sadistic bastard with an affinity for needles, routinely ordered sweets and coffee from her before going out to hunt members of her kind. She didn't really even think she had a damned kind, but in accordance with CCG policy, she accepted that she was in fact, a different, "kind," of person. She didn't really think the people these investigators were killing deserved to live. Some of them were probably scum. In fact, if she'd seen the human scum that walked through the doors of her establishment asking for coffee and feeling for quite a few other things die, just as her kind was being destroyed, she might of simply accepted things as they were. But that wasn't the case. It seemed like ghoul scum was far worse off than human scum. And the good people, the good ghouls, rather, were far worse off than both of the aforementioned parties.

And, most of all, she'd only met one investigator worth knowing in her lifetime. The rest, well, it wasn't that she thought they didn't deserve to live in particular, more like they deserved death. Emphatically.

To stand by and to nothing was to rot in a cage. Probably next to a pretty healthy bird. She didn't care for birds very much, and to rot next to one, well, that probably would taste a little like cake did. Touka Kirishima decided, despite the direction her fellow "cofounders" of the café dictated, that she would save ghoul lives. To kill "doves" and second class investigators only brought in big fish ghoul killers. And to help them escape was only to deny the fact that there wasn't packaged meat floating around anymore for lower ranked ghouls. Sooner or later, they'd have to come back to the streets for food, and it'd all be a pointless exercise. Perhaps the only way to save ghoul lives was from the inside. To retrieve information on the "hunting routes" of the doves floating around the city was to ensure the survival of at least a few ghouls who could eat and return to their shacks on the edge of town. To protect a ghoul's way of life, well, that didn't seem like such a pointless exercise.

Maybe she'd get to meet this Ghoul Investigator again. Maybe she could figure out why he changed from a complete idiot into an asshole who happened to still be a complete idiot.

To become a third rate investigator meant proving one's worth. It also meant being able to suppress the RC count in her body to avoid systematic detection, much less organic give away. RC inhibitors meant she could pass through machines undetected pretty easily, though that sill made her sweat. She'd have to find a way to carry a constant supply of RC inhibiting syringes with her. Perhaps that was the easiest part though. Proving her worth to a CCG department constantly on edge concerning the idea of a ghoul mole seemed a little bit more pressing.

Touka had been a little lucky over the last few years, though. Well, lucky and hardworking. Her move from 20th ward to the surrounding areas had given her a great many talents. She was in charge of using computer systems to keep encrypted records of the ghouls still under the protection of her café after the incidents resulting in the disappearance of Kaneki Ken and a great deal of lower and middle class ghouls. She had to send these records across networks to agencies set up in other wards capable of housing lower ghouls while also providing them with food. It was a difficult job.

The CCG had made this job even more difficult about a year earlier when they discovered some of the information being trafficked through the wards. The leaking of this information resulted in the capture, torture and death of hundreds of ghouls who had no information on the dealings of the Aogiri tree or any of the other high class ghoul organizations. Good ghouls were punished for the crimes of those who fooled around with idea of an all ghoul world and a stupid girl who had no business handling actual human lives.

She hadn't eaten for months because of this.

It was only upon nearly reaching death that she remembered why life was such an important thing. To ignore the lives remaining, that she could still save, if only for a little while, was to accept that life meant, for ghouls, ultimately nothing. Moments like a father's hug, or the warmth of food a friend's made for you, those were nothing in the face of injustices. To eat was to live, and to live was to serve all those remaining alive.

She gained skills she never thought possible in the time since. She could send information across any line at any time, to any ward, perhaps even farther than that. She quite often enjoyed leaking false information to the CCG and attending their party of anger and frustration when some high ranked ghouls waited for them instead of the small fry. Ill equipped investigators were easy prey. Though, she realized this wasn't exactly joy she was feeling. It was more like a respite, between her times routing information. She was constantly working to relocate people when the slightest hint of a dove caught her nose. Even more than that, probably, and the ghouls probably got annoyed because of it. But they were alive.

That wasn't joy, either. To save lives was important. It made life matter again, in some areas. But, it seemed, selfishly, like the filling of a hole. She wondered if it was possible to fill this hole, or perhaps exterminate the fire, the desire to fill it entirely.

The skills she gained in computer networking gave her not only practical skills that could be used by any department, but also skills in coordination and discipline. She also had incredible physical strength. That'd probably be pretty helpful, too.

The real tough cookie to crack was how she'd show those bastards that she was quite ready to join their ranks. What could she do?

The doors of the CCG were a pretty marvelous thing. They'd transformed from the efficient crystal things that marked police departments into great, black marble gates that led to heaven and hell. Passing through them was godlike.

The swipe of an employee card was a pretty great sounding thing, as well. The beeping sound that came from the computer made Touka think about what the cream feeling of a doughnut should taste like.

Kaneki said they were good.

"You're cleared, first class Ayama. Is this your first day mam? I've never seen you before."

"You could say that. Could you direct me as to where I can, uh, find Akira Mado? She's the reason I've been assigned here."

"Oh really? I did hear something about an investigator being reassigned. So maybe you're the one who'll be taking his place. It'd be nice to see some more women around here. The elevators are just over to the right hand side. You'll have to use your card to get up, so keep it out honey."

Reassigned. Her stomach felt a little sloppy then. It felt like soup. Soup usually tasted like tire. If tire had a taste, well, one that could be described, it'd probably be anxious. Which probably tasted like something akin to a rather purple flower. So on.

The RC scanner didn't go off. And she'd forgotten to sweat about it, it seemed. The elevator looked far more modern than the gothic doors she'd entered. They reeked of the money being funneled into this place by the dirty bastards running a systematic annihilation. She liked bloody people a lot more than the dirty ones. The bloody ones smelled better.

"Tomoe Ayama" The elevator read her name back to her. That name didn't seem much different than her real name. It felt a lot more alive, more human than Touka Kirishima.

Her destination was penultimate floor of the CCG headquarters. Boy did she love reading. Or hate it. She knew Akira Mado's offices would be just to the left along a corridor outside the elevator. She knew exactly what she would do. Hopefully. She removed her wig, long black hair floated down and over her shoulders. She figured this would work a little bit better with her aesthetic. She ripped the sleeves of her nice black jacket, showing off some ink she'd had put on the day before. It was all removable, courtesy of a very handsome tattoo artist she'd known from what seemed like a past life. She rolled up the bottoms of her pants and pinned them, revealing the top portion of her combat booms. She looked like a punk. Messenger bag and all.

She wasn't like this at all, though. She knew. She didn't really care about looking like a punk. In fact, it went against her every instinct. She wanted to blend, to sink in. A normal, average looking girl suited her. No one paid much attention to that kind of girl. This wasn't an expression of who she was. This felt novel. She felt like a lying bastard, actually.

Entering Akira Mado's door was kind of interesting. There wasn't as much security as she thought there would be. Perhaps the RC scanners she'd encountered on this floor removed the need. They hadn't caught onto the inhibitors yet.

"Who the hell are you?"

"My name is Tomoe Ayama. I'm 20 years old, and I don't really know what ward I'm from. Probably the 13th. You don't really need to know much more about me, well, other than the fact that I was able to fool your high level security system into thinking I was a first class investigator, sweet talk your military trained receptionist, stroll in here, and gain entrance into your offices. Disclaimer, I've been hyped up on RC boosting drugs for the last few weeks, and I've also gone through your scanners undetected. Makes my arm holes feel a little bit faster, you know."

"You-"

"Yea, I also slashed your tires too. I know that's excessive. But it seemed like the proper thing to do."

"What exactly-"

"Do I want? Or hope to prove. Well, um, I want to catch ghouls. Ghouls killed my father. I'm in better shape than almost any employee you have here. And you don't have to trust me with one of your quinques. Make me a low class investigator with some punk. I'll make him into a hero. We'll be useful to each other, eventually. I'll be back in a week, leave my badge with the receptionist."

The walk out of that office and down the elevator made Touka want to throw up. She did, a little bit in her mouth. But she couldn't throw up in a CCG elevator. Who knows what they could find if they examined it. Did the inhibitor go that far deep? The inhibitor, she remembered.

She took this chance to shoot up.

It had gone as she rehearsed. It allowed her to avoid having a conversation with Akira Mado. The idea of having a conversation with that woman made her want to kill just about every dove in the building, as well as cry a great deal. This way, she avoided that. Even if she didn't get a job, she at least got their attention. She probably looked a little bit like an idiot though. But there wasn't anyone stopping her, yet.

The feeling that she was going to throw up subsided when the doors open. Her stomach felt warm, like a fresh meal. She could almost smell that warm feeling. It made her body feel much more alive. She smiled.

It was this smile that made her look up. Confidence made her do that. Deep down, she probably wanted people to see this side of her. Maybe it made her look a little less average. It was at this point her day was usually ruined.

She saw Juuzou Suzuya, his jet black hair and crazy wide eyes dancing around the CCG lobby, laughing. He permeated evil. The sick feeling returned. She saw him put his hands in somebody's pockets. She wondered if the guy he was talking to knew those hands were the hands of a sadistic asshole who'd torn apart families with a big smile and the scythe of a grim reaper. Did he know hell was so close? Of course he did, these bastards always do. He was probably scum too. She saw him turn around, and look at her face straight on.

He was the worst scum of all.

Haise saw Juuzou coming from pretty far away, perhaps more than a mile. That's why he was so anxious that morning. It wasn't his partner, it was the feeling he'd get robbed again. He kept his snacks in his pockets specifically for Juuzou. Sure, Haise wanted to eat them, the chocolate filled treats he'd made, but if Juuzou ever caught him without any kind of sweets in his pockets, he didn't want to think of how many humans and ghouls would die alike.

"HAISE! I heard you lost your job! Why'd you do that silly?"

"I guess I'm just not as good as you Juuzou eh. I kind of have to get going you know…"

"WAIT!"

Juuzou stuffed his hands his Haise's pockets. This always felt a little bit strange. And Juuzou was a pretty serious killer of men and women, so it was also a tad scary. He dealt with it by looking the other way.

To look the other way today though, was to look into a woman's eyes. He read from across the lobby the eyes of a liar, in kind of a good way though. She looked scary, like a punk. Entirely unfamiliar. Those people usually made fun of Haise for his funny suits. But her eyes were a lot more cool than that. They seemed, nice.

They were smiling too. They made his stomach feel warm.


	2. Chapter 2

Akira Mado sat in her lowered chair with her fingers tangled in the dead ends of her hair. Who the hell was Tomoe Ayama?

Ghoul.

That was the first taste of intuition in her head. That one seemed to bang around in the crevices so much that it hurt. If she wasn't careful, she'd pull out the pins in her hair.

Following that intuition was obviously the very best course of action here. She was probably right. In fact, undoubtedly right. There was no way in hell a Tomoe Ayama still existed. If she ever had been alive, she was dead, well, eaten. She could probably nab the girl down on the bottom floor at this moment. But, well, there's always a but, she thought.

To pair a ghoul, specifically one of much smaller consequence than the higher ups at Aogiri, with Haise Sasaki, a brilliant investigator, seemed interesting. She might lose a few of the lower class ghouls, but perhaps this plan of action would let her observe Haise for a little while longer. He was on a road to hell, and maybe, this way, she'd get him off of it. Keeping him from his team and mired in the consequences of figuring out your partner is a ghoul might keep him a little bit human.

There were glass photo frames on her desk, ones that she couldn't remember knocking down and picking up again. That process seemed to happen in the middle of blackness. Her jacket looked funny; it made her look a hell of a lot older than 24. It also made her look a little bit too much like Haise.

"I miss the black suits, you know."

The photos never seemed to want to talk back, which was quite embarrassing.

Juuzou never seemed to knock, either. She could see him walking towards her room out of the corner of her left eye on the security computer monitor.

She could full well lock the doors of her office floor whenever she wanted.

"OI! You know I ran into your loser partner Haise on the bottom floor! He gave me some treats. You want one, right Miss? Right?!"

"You're going to get me fat Juuzou."

"No not you Miss. I think you're too professional for that. You know I once met a really nasty lady who ate too many treats…"

"Oh Juuzou. Why don't you tell me why you're here."

"OI! We have no developments on the Nutcracker Miss! But some of the class-twos you assigned to me ran straight into a trap set by some Aogiri thugs. They were grunts. But the way they smiled was pretty cute."

"I assume the investigators are dead."

"Of course mam! I'm sorry to say that I did not make in time to save them!"

"You were following them?"

"As my duty as an investigator demands, yes!"

"How closely?"

"Oh I could smell the sweat on their shirts when they first saw the ghouls!"

"I was talking about the ghouls."

"Oh, well they didn't make it back here. I wanted to bring them in for questioning, but they didn't seem to want to come."

"So I guess you're asking for more help then."

"Well when you can, send some, but I'd like Haise back. He's much more fun than any of the trash you've been passing along."

Juuzuo Suzuya reminded Akira Mado a lot of her father, and, quite annoyingly, Haise. She felt like she was both his child and father. His smile was just as fake as her father's, and his eyes were so soft like his. He was a good kid, and probably a bad man.

"Also, Miss Akira. I ran into a ghoul downstairs. I tried to give her a Haise certified delicious treat and she wouldn't take it. She also smelled really good, like a coffee shop doughnut."

"What do you think of her working with Haise?"

"OHH, she might eat him. That sounds kind of fun. I'd like to see when you get them together."

"When you solve the Nutcracker case, I'll send them along, how does that sound?"

"OI mam! I'll leave the treat over here, okay?"

Watching little Juuzou run away after deciding not to follow directives was just about the cutest thing Akira Mado had ever seen. He put his hands behind his back, and like a little animal scampered away.

A mother always longs to understand her children.

Akira Mado sat in her chair with a little bit of chocolate on her lips, holding the up a piece of glass from a knocked over picture in her hand. There was a little bit of blood coming out of the pressed corner of her right thumb.

I hope you live Haise.

After Juuzou scampered away, Haise immediately thought of his partner, well, former partner, Akira Mado. She'd think that was so cute. She seemed to like little birds a lot. Juuzou looked like one, when he wasn't cutting up ghouls.

He then felt insanely embarrassed when he saw Akira's little bird offer this woman he'd been staring at one of his treats. She'd just seen them come out of his own pockets. She'd been so freaked out that she hadn't moved yet. She gave Juuzou a very small smile, and shook her head. Again, nothing like the girls and guys who made fun of his suits. He, for one reason or another thought of a rather funny looking tattooed gentleman in a mask shop. But he'd never been in a mask shop. Nor had he ever met a, "funny" looking tattooed man.

Juuzou gave the girl a big Juuzou hug, just like the ones Haise so often got when he was working on the Nutcracker case or in his first few months as a third-rank investigator in the first ward. He then walked away, and the girl he'd hugged starting walking forward, almost straight out of the pages of a novel and into his arms. He felt his cheeks turn bright red as he started to turn away, and he felt a wet spot just under both his eyes. Weird. But soon that redness turned to pale like a wisp of his hair, and his stomach became a cold stone, cracking. His eyes shrunk. Juuzou stood behind the advancing girl, looking back with his head cocked to the left, his eyes wide and pupils small but distinctly blacker than before. His smile was crooked, but it seemed to fit his face much better. Prey.

But, it was impossible that this girl was a ghoul, which was the signal Haise was getting from Juuzou. He must have wanted to kill her for some other reason. The RC scanners were never wrong, and they'd caught countless ghouls trying to sneak their way into the CCG headquarters. It never worked. The fact that Juuzou's nose lit up scared Haise. Would he kill someone who wasn't a ghoul? Juuzou could probably hide that fairly well.

Time seemed to slip away as those eyes turned away and walked towards and into the elevator. Really, the girl Juuzou had eyed after him seemed to walk at an infinitely fast pace towards him. In some ways, it felt like she already passed him. He hadn't felt this way, well, it felt like since he was an 18 year old. Wrong. This was the first time he'd ever felt like this.

As she passed him in real time, her eyes were locked on the ground. She had a frown on her face. It forced him to feel something other than nervous.

He locked her right arm with his right hand.

"Hey, I'm sorry if Mr. Juuzou came off a little weird. He's like that with everyone, though. If that makes you feel any better."

"I'd say you're more creepy than he was."

Haise felt like was thrown across the room,, straight into the boxes he'd admired earlier with the rabbit and an X. His eyes seemed to squirm around his face. He simply didn't feel anymore. Great.

Touka Kirishima couldn't believe what she just said.

You think he's an idiot? No, Touka, you're an idiot. She could already feel how she'd be punching herself in the gut at home later for this one.

She dared to look at his face after she'd glanced away while maiming his pride, and he had smiled at her. A smile that read embarrassment, just like the hand tucked behind his hair, scratching his head. She smiled.

"Also, don't touch me ever again, creepy bastard!"

"Oi! You've got it Miss!"

She ran away. Quite literally, out of his sight and onto the street. It felt like she'd been running a few of those human marathons since she'd insulted him twice. She never got tired from running before.

She decided to head out to a quiet spot, one where ghouls often went to camp out with their families when they needed a meal. They left their families there, while they went out to gather one or two good reservoirs of meat. Recently, the CCG had raided out the place. They caught a few ghouls there. Lower ranked ghouls knew to stay away. And so, even if there were any doves there, she could take care of them.

She sat on the cement block stops that lead to the sewer systems under a bridge in the corner of Ward 1. It seemed in this place that she was out of existence entirely. Neither ghoul nor dove appeared to leave a trace on the banks of the muddy river that flowed through. She hadn't encountered anybody, and the usual caution that beat just as regularly as her heart hadn't really expected anyone to be there.

No matter how long she stared at the water, she couldn't see herself. It was just too murky. The filth of all the wards collected in this one spot, well, it felt like it. That dirt made her think about her hair. She remembered when it was a little bit lighter than it was now, before she dyed it. She liked the purple tint of her hair. It was different that most of the people that floated around the 20th ward.

She jumped into the filthy, muddy water that floated through the first ward. The tattoos would take some pretty persistent scrubbing, but if she stayed under like this, she was confident some of them would wash off. The mud would cover everything else.

She felt peace below the surface though. Old newspapers and fliers hit the bottom of her feet when they floated by, and up to the surface. The current felt much more like a nice breeze than an actual push. It felt like she'd been baking in the sun all day, like she did quite frequently in high school during her exercise classes. She'd been sweating for a while. A breeze had picked her up like a cup of water.

It felt much more like she could see herself underwater than above. She saw the black of her hair and bones in her shoulders. She recounted the apron she often wore in the 20th ward. The combat boots she liked, and the long black socks that made her smile. She even remembered the eye patch she'd worn for a while after the Aogiri incident when she was being moved around.

This is where she belonged. A ghoul hidden in the trash, she thought, at least.

For a moment, she felt like hope existed in some sort of ray of light pushing down on her through the mud. She'd read it in a novel. If she just swam upwards, that white eye patch would be waiting for her on the banks when she got out. That was hope.

But there wasn't any ray of light, no hope. That was simply because she happened to be under a bridge. Adventures never happened under bridges in the books she read.

When she finished putting her jacket back on, she looked at her arms. That ink hadn't faded at all. That damn Uta was just too good.

When she turned her body back towards the streets and hopefully to the café, if she could make it there with her dripping wet hair, she wished for something incredibly human. It embarrassed her. Her whole life, she'd been wishing to have moments last just a little bit longer. She'd always wanted the peace to last. But this was the opposite of that, and really selfish.

She wanted to wish away a week's worth of time. To step into the next week, and hopefully to a job that she'd doubt she'd get. She felt something stir her guts up. It was a damned terrible feeling. She groaned and tasted the mud in her mouth. Spit it out.

She felt excited.

Haise Sasaki did not in particular dislike being on the first floor. He didn't have to wait as long to get to his office, so he could get to work much faster. He could also sleep in his office, which kind of felt like a detective novel to him. Before, he was expected to sleep in the quarters provided to his team. He didn't have an apartment on the outside yet, so he'd be forced to sleep in his new, less equipped office till he could acquire one. Still, he felt like he was a badass rogue detective working hard to solve the crime of the century when he thought about sleeping on his floor that night.

But when Akira Mado opened his door with a smile and some rather devious looking eyes, he felt entirely embarrassed. He remembered when his mom found him once with his room rather messy. Though, that never actually happened. Haise had always been a rather clean young fellow.

"You know Haise, I think this office suits you perfectly."

"I feel much more like a detective in here."

"It's much too small. You'll never be in here during the day."

"And that suits me?"

"Yea, you're best suited to be on the streets Haise, rounding up ghouls. That's where top investigators should be."

"Well, it seems I'm not actually a top investigator, am I now, haha? Can I ask why you're here anyway? The great Akira Mado probably has better things to do than check out the office of a demoted third-rank, I'm sure."

"Probably, but I also have a great bit of things to do commissioned to me by CCG brass that would be a much bigger waste of time. Plus, I wanted to be the first to tell you."

"Tell me what?"

"You're getting a new partner next week."

Haise smiled. He liked working alone, he'd always liked that, but working with another investigator made him feel a great deal better about his last team. Perhaps he didn't like being alone. No, he simply wanted to be distracted, right?

"What are they like?! And don't they have better things to do than help me out?"

"No, she's a third-rank investigator. It's more of a trial period, to be honest. I hope you don't mind,"

"Not at all, any kid of company would be nice, as long as she can handle ghouls, that is."

"I haven't personally tested her combat, but I have a hunch she'll be that best partner you've ever had."

A hunch. Akira Mado was never wrong concerning her own intuitions. Haise smiled just a little bit. He believed he was getting a great person, especially if the person even excited Akira.

"Third-rank, huh? What's her background?"

"Well, you'll know more next week, but to be honest, I have no idea. I've only met her today. She managed to pull off some impressive tricks, let me tell you. And she seemed to catch the eyes of another one of our first-class investigators."

"Oh, who? She must be impressive."

"Juuzou. She caught him in the lobby. Well, I'll be seeing you little punk. I hope you'll be back with us on the top floors soon, though Haise. I miss my partner."

The door clicked. It couldn't be, could it? There's no way it could be that same girl. She made it seem like she would never want to see him again. But he'd been there in the lobby. Juuzou didn't seem to notice anyone else. It couldn't be her, though. Right?

He was frightened nearly out of his chair. This was the worst case scenario. He was deathly afraid of embarrassing himself in front of her again. Beautiful eyes didn't seem to pass by him that often. He'd only really remembered it three times before. Akira had beautiful eyes, and she was probably the nicest person he'd met in his life time. The other two times, well, he couldn't really remember. They just made him feel warm. Oh, he couldn't handle the thought of messing things up with that girl again.

But still, he smiled quite a lot while wrestling with embarrassment and self-doubt. Maybe he'd get to see those eyes again. He felt genuinely excited. He liked feeling that way. He hadn't been that way in a while. He hid his face in the wrinkles on the sleeve of his left jacket arm.

It couldn't be her.

While Haise was walking out to grab some dinner, which he usually ate in his office as a first-class, he said hi to Michiko, who'd he seen every day for the last few month.

"Hi there Michiko, would you like me to bring you back anything to eat? I'll be picking up a lot, considering I haven't eaten out in a while."

"Oh Haise, no thanks to the food, but perhaps you'd like to know a special bit of information I have concerning you?"

"Oh definitely Miss. Does it have to do with my partner?"

"I see Miss Akira already spoiled it. Well, I happen to have both met her and made up her new badge, complete with a name."

"Oh, what's she like?"

"Well, I'll tell you, she… leaves an impression. I'd much rather you see for yourself. But I will give you her name, if you'd like."

"Fire away Michiko."

"Tomoe Ayama. She fits the name, I would say."

"Thanks Michiko, that'll give me a few things to think about. I'll bring you something sweet back, and I won't take no for an answer."

Haise walked out of the CCG headquarters. He knew exactly where he was going. There was a little café he hadn't been to in a while that had some great treats. Juuzou loved them anyway. He wanted some coffee, too.

"Tomoe Ayama, huh? I can't wait."


	3. Chapter 3

Haise Sasaki's trip to the coffee shop was a mixture of music and stumbling over raises in the cement sidewalk. He felt so outstandingly good that these little blunders weren't as important as the classic songs swimming through his brain.

He hadn't been to ":Re" in a little while. He found it a little nostalgic, but he couldn't figure out exactly why. It was a good nostalgic, but he couldn't that out either. It was almost like a drug for Haise. So, he only went on special occasions.

Did he really consider getting a third-class partner after a demotion from a group of people he quite considered his children a special occasion? Yea, he guessed so.

He wanted to get some doughnuts with sweet feeling, too. He'd had doughnuts his whole life, but whenever he had one now, his taste buds exploded. Little pockets of jelly and chocolate made him quite happy. They didn't make him feel happy just because they tasted good, though. It was like he was living an intermission. A doughnut felt like a cold drink in between two halves of a bad play.

Well, it was more like :Re was a really damn cold class of water in between two halves of a crappy play in a Japanese summer. But, Haise kind of liked plays.

Approaching the street the café was located on, Haise's smile turned into a desperate fear. What if the café wasn't open this late? It was already pretty late into the night, roughly 20:30. A lot of normal cafes were often still open, especially in a popular place like the first ward, but a childlike worry was stirring in him. He started to run, hoping to be the last one through the door and grab the last few doughnuts and coffee left. He also hoped they'd be out of chocolate bars and the buns that Juuzou liked. He didn't want to buy those.

He stopped, just around the corner of the building. He was being dishonest. There was a waitress who worked here, with very fluffy hair and a really beautiful smile. She'd asked him once about being a teacher. He kind of liked that idea, being a teacher. Really, when he was in his office at night he'd often think about that, being a teacher and having his own students that he could assign far too many books too. He imagined his team Q, emphasis on the his, complaining a little more than the other kids.

He'd imagined this all thanks to a waitress at a café he only went to on particular occasions. What did that mean? Was she important? He'd always felt heavy when she was around at the café. A constant need to say sorry kept him from speaking most of the time. That would have definitely been creepy. He was happy that she was around, but sad that all he ever said was please and thank you. Also, that he was a Ghoul Investigator.

But even so, how could he look this woman in the face after his encounter earlier today. They had the same eyes. Soft eyes that couldn't lie, well, in this case it felt a little bit like cheating, to see them twice in the same day. He read too much, way too much.

When he looked up, resolved to order his coffee and secure the last of a dying food crop, he saw that girl who'd been in the CCG earlier that day. He saw her soft eyes grow a little bit scared, and then really angry.

That moment was one of those weird occasions in life where Haise knew the choice he made really had to be the correct one. And yet, he had absolutely no idea what to do, or say. So he chose the path less traveled.

"OHH haha, I guess you caught me, I've been stalking you! I'll run away now!"

He didn't even run backwards. He ran forward and past her. What an idiot.

Touka Kirishima's second encounter with Haise Sasaki in the same day was a rather embarrassing one. She was covered in mud, which she regretted now after having loved seconds earlier.

She'd been coming back home to the café, which she lived in as well, in one of the three apartments located above the main floor, and she'd neglected to use the back. Well, it was more of a choice. She wanted to people see a ghoul covered in its proper filth. Be disgusted, she said. That was a fucking terrible choice. Coming around the corner of the café she spotted Haise, his head down. She recognized that he was thinking instantly, and that made her a little happy. That was just before she snapped back into reality, realizing that she wasn't Touka Kirishima at the moment, and even if she was, he had no memories of such a person.

All she felt was scared for few seconds. He was lifting his head up. Shit, shit, what should she do? Too late. They made eye contact. That made her a little mad. She constantly felt both like she wanted to see Haise and never see him, at least not until he got back some of his memories. She knew her face looked mad. She wanted to kick his ass a little bit.

What he said next, well, Touka thought about that for a little while.

"OHH haha, I guess you caught me, I've been stalking you! I'll run away now!"

That caught her entirely by surprise. She blushed a little bit. It didn't excite her. That was genuine fear, far scarier than the angst she'd felt a few seconds earlier.

That sounded way too much like a boy a girl named Touka Kirishima used to know and the blur that ran past her looked far too much like a white eye patch.

Tomoe Ayama was not okay.

Walking inside the café after that was a sort of blur. She dragged her feet across the floor, tracking some mud from the river bank in. She knocked over a chair on her way to the back, and she almost ran into a glass case of food on the final leg of her trip; a fairly expensive one.

Luckily, there were no customers. It was closing time.

Yomo Renji caught her on her way up the stairs, and she could make out the curse words he muttered under his breath. It didn't really phase her. They weren't malicious.

Over the previous months, she'd learn to hear these words when he spoke under his breath. A lot of people thought he was just speaking to himself, but Touka understood that he was just a little bit afraid of another person hearing what he actually had to say.

He grabbed her hand and she went along. He pointed her to the bathroom and off she went to wash the mud and Kaneki off.

Haise Sasaki quite liked the feel of the mud under his hands just below a bridge that hovered over a river of sewage that connected a large number of wards across Japan. It was a great big nasty thing, but the mud that surrounded it was nice and damp, but not too wet.

He sat on the cement blocks so his suit wouldn't get dirty. Akira Mado had picked this one out for him. She said it made him look really, "sharp," and the exact opposite of a really stupid investigator she once knew. Haise really didn't remember Akira calling people stupid all that often.

When he looked out over the river, Haise couldn't quite shake the feeling that someone was trapped under it. He threw off his suit, getting tangled around the belt and cursing as he brushed his pants off and onto the mud.

Jumping in, he looked around, though it made his eyes hurt considerably. There was junk floating around, but he couldn't find anyone. He panicked, because he knew, someone had to be down there. He kept looking, and looking.

Haise Sasaki was a well-trained Ghoul Investigator who possessed a body that many claimed was beyond human physical limits. But he couldn't hold his breath forever, and when he started to lose consciousness, he felt his foot get caught in some cut up fence jutting up from the bottom of the riverbed.

When he came to, he was back on the bank of the river. His back hurt quite a bit.

He laughed for a very long time while he rubbed his back.

"I suppose someone ended up saving me. Guess I was trapped, huh?"

He laid his head against the cement block. Before blacking out, he had felt the warmth of that river blanket him, and he could recall that perfectly. The cool of that cement block felt pretty nice.

Haise experienced a moment of clarity then. He realized that it'd be really nice to have a friend to share this experience with. To lie against cool cement blocks with, and to jump into sewer rivers with, frankly. In those moments he forgot entirely about how dangerous being his friend was, which to be honest, he never really remembered in the first place. He allowed himself to want friends. A friend with really nice eyes. That would balance him out. He knew his eyes weren't very kind at all. They were warped. Sometimes, they didn't really feel like his.

He thought about his new partner. Maybe he'd seen her today, twice. Or maybe he'd missed her, but either way, he was excited. Against these blocks, he allowed himself to feel that.

"Perhaps I wished you were trapped under there, partner. So I could pull you up, a week early. Creepy, huh?"

Talking to himself here felt fitting. He wanted a week to pass by.

Touka got up a little bit early a week after her encounter with Haise. She needed the extra time to change into Tomoe Ayama.

She changed into a black suit top and skirt, with a bowtie and suspenders connected to the belt she had wrapped around her waist. She wore some nylons and leather shoes, much like the other female doves she saw around town, however rare that was. She knew eventually she'd be hunting in combat boots and a white button up again, but the first day was important. She wore a rather long black suit jacket with black sleeves underneath to hide that tattoos she didn't have.

She strapped the messenger bag across her body last. It was full of the inhibitors she needed throughout the day to survive the RC scanners. Injecting herself was always a painful experience. She'd started to disassociate from it earlier that week. She knew what happened with Kaneki and Jason so long ago. "How did he survive that," sometimes she wondered. She'd never got a chance to ask him about it. She only heard whispers that made her want to cry.

She marched past Yomo out of the store. He knew what she was doing, and he didn't entirely approve. She knew she'd catch an ear full from him later, but this morning was far too important.

The confidence with which she walked was critical to not thinking about the possibility that Akira Mado could refuse her request and be luring her into some kind of trap that would prove she was in fact a ghoul. Akira's father was capable of such a thing, so she could imagine his daughter just as cruel.

Walking into the CCG headquarters brought that nervous quake in her stomach on. These bastards were about to gut her. She looked clean today, much less punk and much more Touka Kirishima. At least she could cling to that identity a little bit. Perhaps she could become the Rabbit if she needed to, if things got really messy.

Her approach to the front desk was a long one. This was when she would figure out if she was capable of saving the lives of her fellow ghouls, to help them out of the river current to shore.

It was at this point that little, sadistic, bastard Juuzou ran towards Touka.

"TOMOE! Do you have any treats for me?! Tell me you do!"

"I don't sorry, and I'm kind of in a… wait, how hell do you…"

"Know your name?! Well I have your badge silly! I wanted to make sure I delivered it to you personally. I figured you'd have treats for me, because Haise hasn't had any in some time."

"Which investigator is Haise?"

Juuzou pressed the placard that she could use to navigate the building into her chest, which surprisingly hurt a great deal. He was strong.

"Haise is the one who ran into you outside Café :Re. He ran past you. You blushed at him. Do you know I haven't actually talked to Haise in a week? I just like to follow people. That's why I know he doesn't have treats."

This didn't surprise Touka at all. She wasn't moved, or scared. She knew Juuzou was really an asshole who should probably end up dead at some point sooner rather than later.

"I'm going to follow you Miss Ayama. And when you make a mistake, I'll cut you up. Or maybe you'll make it all the way back here to headquarters."

"ANYWAY, OI, Miss, swipe that card at the reception and go up to Miss Akira Mado's office! She wants to see you about your new partner. I think you'll be great together! Bye now!"

Haise Sasaki waited in the chair across from Akira Mado laughing for quite a while. Akira Mado had built up quite a few bad puns in the little while he'd known her.

Those puns seemed to make her happy.

"So anyway, Akira, why am I up here? I thought I was supposed to be meeting my partner today, and I don't want to take any time away from the Nutcracker case."

"Haise, has anyone ever told you that you are a very nice guy with the propensity to say really idiotic things."

He knew someone had said something akin to that countless times. But he couldn't remember such occasions at the moment.

"Probably."

"I knew a few investigators like that before you got here. I quite like those kinds of people."

"Thank you. I wish I could have met them, Miss."

"Anyway, you are meeting your partner today. She's walking over to us as we speak."

Haise got up from his chair in excitement. He was ready to go out in the field with someone and kick some ass. He'd come around to the idea of working his way back up to the special projects he was involved in as a first-class.

Regardless of who it was, Haise had thought through Tomoe enough to not be scared anymore. He was ready for anyone to walk through that clicking door.

After the click, space seemed to suspend right on Haise's finger tips. They were anxious to great another person.

Through the door walked Tomoe Ayama, the girl with the nice eyes who he'd met twice before on the same day one week earlier. He wasn't scared. He wasn't nervous. Though he could see her pupils narrow just a tad and the white of her eyes grow big. She was surprised, and probably a bit mad.

He smiled.

"It's nice to really meet you, Tomoe Ayama. My name is Haise Sasaki. I'm your partner, and I hope we get along just great."

"Also, nothing creepy here, oi! I promise, partner."

"Yea, shut up creepy bastard. Just don't follow me around anymore outside of work. And I hope you're not a total waste of space."

Haise felt like he was again being punched in the gut, this time into the arms of Akira, who was probably just as scary a woman as the one standing before him. He also noticed it didn't really seem like she was lying anymore. The way she looked, her aura, it seemed to match her eyes. She seemed so much more familiar this way. He wanted to apologize at that very moment for all the things he never remembered doing.

"Okay, well it seems like you guys now both know each other pretty well, and I won't ask about the stalking thing Haise. I really want to get you guys started on your actual job today, though."

Haise offered his seat to Tomoe, who declined with a pretty rough headshake. He decided he'd probably the best one to communicate with Akira about the beginning of the case. Tomoe didn't seem all that into social interaction.

"What do you want us to do? Are we gathering intel for the Nutcracker investigation groups? Perhaps we'll work under Juuzou's team?"

"Hell no Haise. You and your fellow third-rank over here are going to break up some of the lower ranked ghoul attacks on civilians in ward one. If you happen to gather intel, pass it along, but if we keep the number of weak ghouls down, the strong won't have enough pawns to fight us."

"Yea, okay Haise, let's go. I don't think we need much more direction about busy work."

She pulled Haise by his left arm out of the office. He looked back and saw Akira smiling with her hands crossed under her chin. He was quite enjoying this too, under the yelling.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

"You know you can let go of my arm now. We should get to know a little bit about each other before we go out in the field together."

She forgot she was holding onto to his arm. Her face reddened, but that only made her hand clamp down even harder.

"Oi, that's worse. It hurts now!"

She stopped and slammed him into the ground before stomping out of the CCG building.

Touka Kirishima's trip down the elevator had been quite the experience. She had no idea what it meant to be a, "dove." What were the procedures in going out and working the field? She was virtually dependent on Haise.

That sucked.

Getting away from him was just about the only thing she could do to come to terms with this tragedy. She knew he'd follow though.

"Hey, Tomoe, I really think you've got the wrong idea here, I just want to-"

"You just want to work, I know Haise. I'm not an idiot."

"But I never said-"

"Go ahead and give me some directive, oh experienced one. This is day one for me, you know."

To admit that actually felt fairly nice. It was a great truth between both of them. She didn't need to be embarrassed about it. Kaneki wouldn't care about something like that, would he? No, Kaneki Ken didn't matter anymore.

Haise Sasaki wouldn't care.

"Yea, I guess I can do that. I guess I should tell you I'm not a very good investigator first of all, so if you ever get a chance to work with someone else, pick their brains too. Investigators like us are usually too young to send in on any Aogiri ghouls, so we comb highly populated areas in the day searching for places Ghouls might hunt in at night. We then add those places to an existing map of routes in each ward that ghouls frequent. It's not too bad."

"It sounds boring."

"Well I figure if you were above this workload you'd probably be a second-class. But you're stuck here with me. I know a place I'd like to start, follow me."

Stern Haise was a little bit different. He looked a little bit better tasting.

Touka and Haise took a bullet train just a few blocks away from the station to the other side of the town. CCG headquarters was located near the southern edge of the ward, and reaching the other side was a bit of a walk.

Still, she kind of wished for a walk.

The inside of bullet trains were a little risky these days. They were newly equipped with RC scanners in ward one, making travel for ghouls without the aid of the RC inhibitors in Touka's bag a pretty dangerous proposition. Without the use of a mass transit system, slinking through the dove grime of the city streets was nearly impossible without the help of a certain café.

A little smile.

Touka realized something quite scary while walking through the scanners without a beep. Her life had been boiled down to living in shacks and the top floors of café apartments away from society. She was hidden, and often times the victim of both the elements and secondary prejudice. She was forced to observe the cruelty that often times accompanied a ghoul's choice to enter the outside world. She felt that pain almost as much as they did. And yet, here she was, living a higher class of life on a train. She was essentially human. She liked riding trains like them, and felt sick for it.

"So, what exactly did you do to become a third-rank investigator Tomoe? You must have done something pretty incredible."

Her head took a few moments to snap over in his direction; she'd have to stay sheathed in her new name all day long. Haise Sasaki was rather intelligent, for being an idiot, after all. Though a little gullible.

"I'm not interested in really sharing my background with you Haise. But I suppose you should know that I'm pretty skilled with a computer, I'm very passionate, and I can probably kick your ass."

"Oh well I-"

"I'm 100 percent sure I can kick your ass."

"Yea I'm s-"

"With both my legs broken."

She hoped he'd smile, so when she did her obligatory look in the other direction. She scanned the window for him. The train was rather empty in this car. They were easily readable doves, and doves scared people away.

He didn't smile. He bit his right cheek and tapped the side of his head with his right palm twice.

"You know, I guess you probably don't intend to tell me anything really material about the small stuff. Unless you think it will scare me. What I'm most interested in, though, is why ghouls?"

"What do you mean?"

"The way I think about it is, well it takes a special kind of asshole to hunt down ghouls. I'm that special kind myself. You were probably spot-on when you called me a bastard. But you're not that special kind of asshole. So why this?"

Quit talking Haise. Quit, talking. She'll leave.

But he had to know. This was a terrible job. The worst.

"I think you've got it all wrong, Haise. It seems every one of us is quite capable of killing a ghoul. Seems a rather ordinary job to me."

"It must have taken you years to get in the kind of shape you are. I'm still not flexible enough and I've been doing this for a while. That's not ordinary dedication."

Haise waited for her to answer, but he realized maybe this wasn't the direction to go. He really only wanted to know one thing anyway. He only had to know one thing about Tomoe Ayama.

"Hey, my bad for asking all these questions. We should be talking about lighter things, right? What's your favorite type of coffee at :Re?"

Haise expected a straighter answer, but Tomoe flattened her hand and stopped just about an inch from his face. She tapped his face, and then grabbed the top of his head.

"The bigger question is why you ran away the other day. You didn't even run away correctly, so did I scare you that much, eh Haise?"

"OWW! No I was just really surprised, and you know, maybe I wasn't even going to get coffee haha, after all, I did say I was just stalking you!"

"You're not making this any better for yourself idiot! That just makes me want to punch you even more!"

He could wait a little while for the answer he needed, right?

"I'm sorry!"

Yea, he could definitely wait a little longer.

"And what was with all those questions earlier?! Trying to find out where I live too!"

Train rides are coffee break intermissions.

Juuzou Suzuya found train rides to be quite boring, well, especially when they were lonely. He had to sit on top of a seat cushion from a train car over and watch little Haise by himself. That was always the worst part of following anyone though.

But Haise probably had some really nice sweets though!

"Ah fuck it!"

Juuzou jumped through space and time, and the door.

"Haise! I've been looking for you!"

"Juuzou? – Wait you've been looking for me?"

"Of course! I need your help on my case."

"Hey, creepy guy, Akira Mado tells us what to do, not you. Buzz off."

"OH, I've liked you since I met you, ya' know. I hope you stick around for a while."

Juuzou was perched, knees apart, feet together and back curved forward on Haise's knee. His head jutted out like a snake uncoiling, a little bird stuffed down his stomach. A little chocolate bird. Mmm.

"Hey Juuzou, I don't want to make you mad or anything, but I don't have any treats right now you know… and Tomoe's kind of right… hehe…he…"

"Oh, Haise, that's okay."

Juuzou patted the top of Haise's head.

"I'm going to be around you a lot the next few days. Remember, I'm easy to miss, so don't worry if you can't see me. I'm sure you'll get some soon."

"Aren't you trying to catch the Nutcracker? That's why you need my help, isn't it?"

"I'm sure a genius like him doesn't need help from dumb asses like us. You can do it alone, right investigator Juuzou?"

He hopped down, off Haise's knee, and, sticking a finger out and under her chin, finished swallowing the chocolate bird.

"You're right, Haise is a little bit of a klutz. He's silly all the time. I'd be hurt if you didn't make it back every day! I'd like to see you around as long as you can possibly survive here, Miss Tomoe!"

Juuzou grabbed the sides of her head when she tried to pull away, and tapped his forehead against hers.

"You're so pretty!"

He then bolted out of the window.

Train rides are such boring things. No one sits next to me.

Watching a human jump out of a train had been a weird experience, primarily because she couldn't picture any particular reason for why he'd done it. Why jump out then? He could have walked off to another car and waited, or even jumped out the back. He would have known what he was flying into then. But, he just spiraled out of their train car immediately. She almost laughed. He was evil, but after a great deal of, "considering," she concluded that she would have done the same.

She did not for a second doubt his ability to survive, though. Humans were capable of despicable things, namely living like cockroaches. To roll into death wasn't Juuzou's style.

She peered out at Haise after that, and saw him sweating. She didn't know what to say.

What did he have to be worked up over? She was the one Juuzou wanted to cut up.

Haise reminded her a little too much of Kaneki, in that respect.

She contemplated trying to break the silence when Haise lifted his head back up to lean on the window behind them with a smirk on his face.

"Oh that Juuzou, he's crazy. But he's not so bad Tomoe. He's still a kid, somewhere in there, a nice kid."

The rest of the train ride had been a rather quiet one. That didn't really matter to Touka, though; their silence was devoid of pressure.

Stepping off the train was like stepping back into her youth. They were in the slums of the first ward, a ghoul haven for those not rich enough to pay for proper security, but rarely raided by the CCG. It was pretty much empty of humans, the only ones left being the poorest of the poor. Touka's initial reaction to realizing this was that the CCG was behind that.

Eh, at least they were throwing the ghouls a bone.

All of this made Touka worry just a bit. This place was supposed to be an agreement between the CCG and the ghouls. An unwritten compromise that until the CCG was done with Aogiri, the small fry could live in peace here. Why were investigators doing their job here?

"Alright Haise, what are we doing here? What's the directive?"

"Akira wanted us to help take care of civilians and gather intelligence for the Nutcracker case. As crazy as Juuzou is, like you saw, he probably does need as much help as we can give him."

"How exactly do you plan on doing that?"

"We're going to interrogate every ghoul that lives here. By any means necessary, we will extract the information Juuzou needs, and fulfill Akira's task."

"I think Akira Mado wanted us to keep actual civilians safe, and I don't know a single person who lives out here. Let's go somewhere a little more relevant Haise."

"You don't have to watch."

Her eyes bulged out of her head. They felt like they were popping into dancing yoyo strings. There was no way to avoid watching. She'd tried.

Haise moved forward, and she watched.

Haise Sasaki had never been to the broken down shacks that rested under sewer bridges and at the bottom of town staircases. He'd also dreaded going, because he knew it'd be much like cracking his own enamel.

He wasn't as crazy as Juuzou. He also wasn't as calm as Akira Mado. He was in possession of good but not great investigative skills. He couldn't forget little details; they would come haunting him later, much like picking up a book one's never read and knowing exactly how it ends.

But Haise Sasaki was an incredible gatherer of information. Incredible. No one needed to see how he got them the information, they just asked for help acquiring it.

That was one of the very few reasons he had been a first-class investigator at the CCG. While he walked out of the field the train platform was located in, he decided to look back.

There they were; those nice eyes. Tomoe Ayama. He didn't see them much in their time together, because she always seemed to be looking away. This time, they didn't make him happy. They made him sick. He could taste tire in his mouth.

They made him think about all the horrible things investigators had done, were doing, and would do in the future.

A smirk, and he walked away.

The first place he came upon was a sort of small one family camp set up at the bottom of a small dip of dirt outside the field's edges. You couldn't see it from the station, but if you walked out of the yellowed grass, you could smell it.

It smelled much like Akira Mado's office. Like there was always a candle burning.

They reminded him of a mother, though whose mother that was, he couldn't say. He ripped open the cloth door, and tapped his head twice with his right palm.

**Author's Note: This chapter ran a little short, but I felt it was a good place to end it, considering the events prepared for next time. **


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Everyone who's aged an appropriate amount of time seems to know that to watch someone walk away is a resignation to their decision. The strong, the super humans of the Earth, find the strength to make their mouths move and their feet dance forward, announcing their defiance to the world. They advance.

Touka wanted desperately to advance, to move forward and pull Haise out of his trance. He was going to kill ghouls who really didn't have any business defending themselves against a former first-class investigator. Especially Haise.

But what does one do when the mouth is locked and the feet are quickly drying cement blocks? When pupils are itches on the white of an eye that need to be scratched out, how does one look upon the path clearly?

She was standing on a clock in her mind, ticking forever. There were cries that bounced amongst the gears under her feet that forced the hands to keep counting. She knew this situation wasn't limitless. Eventually Haise would finish, and snap her back out of it. This wasn't a decision she could run from.

She had become an investigator with the purposes of saving the ghouls who couldn't save themselves, and here she stood with a chance to do just that. She could probably fight off Haise, perhaps even subdue him. But that would be it. She would no longer be able to save anybody as an investigator. The whole experiment would last a day. And Haise.

What would happen to Haise?

It became clear to her that this day would require her to make a judgment call on the worth of the ghoul lives in front of her. How terribly human.

_Tick, Tock_

Neither Touka Kirishima nor Tomoe Ayama were capable of making that choice. The truth was, they were still too similar to each other to react differently. She was still a girl forced into the role of a ghoul. Not an investigator. No, neither could do, it would have to be The Rabbit.

_Tick, Tock I will eat that clock. _

Her body moved forward towards the ghouls Haise Sasaki would kill. The Rabbit wasn't a personality, it was an emotion. It was anger, vengeance, and so much more. The Rabbit was the result of a soul dulling pain, something exclusive to the ghouls in that time. It was a fire that burned blue and reheated the soul.

The Rabbit didn't love Kaneki Ken, and The Rabbit didn't care if Haise Sasaki lived. That fire burned to keep ghouls alive. That was Touka's call. That is how she weighed their lives.

They were greater than Haise Sasaki's.

Shit. RC Inhibitors.

_Tick, Tock_

The Rabbit kept her moving. Stopping wasn't a biological option anymore, or, a moral option. But just how would she contend with a former first-rank in hand to hand combat without her kagune?

She could smell a rough burning behind her on the path to Haise. Dead grass, golden and toasting under rather ghoulish feet. After clearing that grass, her eyes shut with burning candle fumes lighting up sections of her brain. The future smelled like her father.

The entrance to the small home she'd just entered reminded her of the place she used to live with her brother at as a child. It also reminded her of her current apartment, for some strange reason.

There was poor lighting, probably designed to keep the hot sun out, as well as little to no additional accessories. It was the average ghoul environment.

The fire inside her belly began to melt her from the inside out, before she saw the white coat jacket sleeve.

"Haise Sasaki, is that you?"

A ghoul with bloody gums and no teeth snarled out from behind a black curtain. An older woman and a young girl who reminded Touka of someone who liked birds just as much as she hated them crawled out. The family of this starved ghoul, presumably.

"Where's the man who that jacket belongs to? Tell me now."

"He left Miss. We told him all we know."

"He said he'd left us live god damn it!"

It felt like her body was uncoiling under the coolness of a rock.

"Why is his jacket here?"

"Please, please, believe me, we did what he told us."

"Why is the jacket wrapped around your son's stomach?

"Miss, that guy closed up my brother's hole. It looks really nasty."

Was Touka, surprised?

"Do you wanna see it Miss?"

No. She felt like she'd been carved out. Her stomach evaporated into the air above her.

"He got run through with a pole."

She wondered why she was finding Kaneki Ken in the poorest section of the north first ward.

"Come on, look at it!"

"Yoko, shut up, this woman's dangerous!"

The oldest Kaneki Ken, she remembered now, would have pissed his pants here.

"No, momma, this lady smells like one of us. Plus she's pretty!"

But, where else would she find him but here, of course.

Haise moved quickly in and out of huts and shack. He checked under bridges for ghouls who hadn't eaten in a while, or who were injured. The trick to getting information from a ghoul was to either threaten their life or to treat them like a human being. Haise preferred the human being approach. To kill without reason was to make his already terrible performance as a father absolutely pathetic.

He hadn't really found out anything meaningful about the Nutcracker from any of the ghouls yet. He'd mostly managed to trade off pieces of his suit for, "I've heard they hunt men exclusively," and, "they seem to be very sadistic." He wanted to clear out a good portion of this place in one day.

He doubted he'd find anything of any real relevance in a place disconnected from first ward social circles, much less the Aogiri. But he thought perhaps the trip could convince Juuzou that he was trying to help. He knew Juuzou was watching.

He also knew that Tomoe was not cut out to stay there for more than a day or two. He hadn't even run into her yet. Perhaps she was still at the platform.

Haise nearly missed a ghoul squatting on top of a tree stump on his way to another shack. His knees were open, and his eyes smiled in some sort of acceptance. His feet were tucked close together. He reminded Haise of Juuzou. In fact, it was like a mirror image, but considerably aged. The man looked like he was held together by little more than paper clip, yoyo string and chewing gum. But, that made him feel even more like Juuzou than before.

Haise wondered if a person like Suzuya Juuzou would allow himself to live that long. Well, more importantly, would the world allow such a thing?

"Hey, I'm sorry to bother you today, but I'd like to offer you some medical aid or some other help in preparing shelter out here for information on the Nutcracker."

"Why would I take anything from a Ghoul Investigator, ya know?"

"Well, if I were you I'd probably say the same thing, but I really need some information, and you look like you're about ready to pass on."

"Do you really think so?"

"I can't give you any food obviously. But I can help you to keep living in other ways."

Haise felt a strange burn in his lower back as soon as those words left his mouth. He felt a pressure behind his left eye, immense pressure, and he couldn't see straight anymore, much less the man in front of him.

"And you don't want to take me to some kind of office or chamber?"

"It's far easier for me to do it this way than the other way. I really have no interest in hurting you."

He felt blood washing down his cheek, flooding out of his eye. He couldn't keep a conversation going for long.

"Investigator, you're probably combing the streets of the ward and a quite a few alley ways you didn't know existed to find the Nutcracker, but perhaps you're looking at it the wrong way. Find a bigger target. That's where you should start. It's trickle down from there, hehe."

There was a scratching under the skin on his lower back. His shirt and suit jacket were gone, only the wraps that had been placed over his injured stomach remained. He was scared to touch his back.

"Who should I be looking for?"

"There's one ghoul whose name pops up no matter what slum of the ward you live in."

"Who is it?"

"Even those who aren't in Aogiri know of him. He's become a myth. A myth that seems to want to eat."

"Don't make me take your fingers off old man, tell me who the hell you're talking about."

Haise was seeing the area as grainy lines and disjointed boxes. The world was squirming, but he could feel the old man grab his shoulder and stop his mouth just to the side of his ear.

"_The Centipede_"

His brain started to crawl out of his ear.

Touka's walk to find Haise was slow. She'd always hated the sun, but under the uncovered heat bathing her skin, she smiled. She'd felt like she'd just taken a swim.

She stopped at every ghoul house she could find. She held their heads in her hands, comforted them and left a number that could be used for relocation. Food would be easier wherever they went. And they all told stories of the strange investigator who tried to patch them up or gave them some bits of instant coffee. She had a few questions that popped up every time she heard these people speak.

Where was Haise keeping all this instant coffee?

How much clothing did he have left?

She was sweating pretty profusely on her walk, but it was a refreshing sweat, like running through a sprinkler as a kid. It felt a little devious to stay out of the shade, but really good. She wondered if Haise was the same.

When she came to a ghoul shaking, no, vibrating against a wall, that refreshing respite turned into seeds of worry.

"Hey, hey, what happened? You can tell me. I'm not your normal investigator."

She cupped the sides of his face like the families before him.

"You have to be careful. You have to be careful."

"Of what? What are you scared of?"

"Not me, you should be scared. He's here."

"Who's here?"

"I smelled him. It was faint but I smelled him. You can't miss him. I smell him on you too. He's been watching you. He may have even touched you. But you don't even know it."

She knew this fear. It was uncontrollable. The ghoul who now appeared to be in a psychotic break was probably normal just a few hours earlier. Was it Haise? Did he do this?

"Who did you smell ghoul? I'm pretty strong, I'll be able to help you if you tell me."

The inhibitor was wearing off.

"NO NO NO RUN AWAY, THE CENTIPEDE IS HERE!"

"The… Centipede?"

Touka heard the ground break behind her. Not so far away, probably around a few corners. She took off, leaving the ghoul to suffer.

The sound was unmistakable. The ground had ruptured, a vein burst open. Some small rocks landed around her. Kagune. That word hissed around her mind. Someone's kagune had pierced the ground. A kagune she breathed in like thick air.

When she finally turned the last corner, what she witnessed was incredible. Haise Sasaki stood, his back to her, with the claw of a Kagune wrenched in between his two arms. He was fighting an old ghoul without any weapons. It looked like he only suffered an injury to his lower back.

What he was fighting, however, was more a bloody mess mistaken for a ghoul than the other way around. He'd been punctured several times across the crust of his body. He was taking a long time to heal, probably malnourished.

Had Haise done that? With his bare hands? Human hands?

"Oi, Tomoe, what do you think? I think I've found a pretty powerful ghoul."

Had he sensed her there?

"He was spouting some nonsense about a centipede of some sort. I don't think he knows much. Too bad."

Touka was transfixed on the face of the ghoul Haise was fighting. The cheek bones that should have held him together were becoming mush under his stained skin. He was mouthing at her.

_Run_.

"I think he's telling you to run Tomoe."

Haise cocked his head back in her direction. He bent much like an insect, peeling back. Not human at all. His face seemed to shift to the left side, distorted, and one of his eyes was bleeding out.

"I think he's being really silly."

She watched him tear the arms of the old ghoul's kagune out of their socket.

Seeing an old man die wasn't like watching any young child die, though he looked just as helpless; there was a sense of relief. It was over for him when he met Haise Sasaki.

She closed the distance between herself and the scene in a few seconds, stopping Haise's advance towards the dying ghoul.

"Hey there, I think you've done enough. Let's leave him and go home for the day. You've cleared out a lot, ya shitty investigator."

"Move."

His pupils turned into rings and his usual voice into a raspy snarl.

"Haise, we're done here."

He grabbed her shoulder. She could feel his fingers like tighten around her joint like a steel trap. He pulled close to her face.

"He doesn't have any information, he's scum."

The Rabbit might have run away. Tomoe Ayama would have cracked. Touka Kirishima cupped Haise Sasaki's face in her hands.

"Have I ever told you that it takes a special kind of idiot to let someone live? A real dumb ass. Know where I can find any?"

She saw the rings in his eyes soften, and where his eye had bled, he cried. The steel trap holding them together released.

"I'm sorry, but can I borrow your jacket?"

What the hell.

She gave him a hard slap across the face and felt the skin under her eyes puff up. He spit blood out from his mouth, and maybe a tooth.

"If I want this guy to live, I need your jacket."

"Take it, perverted asshole."

Touka walked away, going as far the corner she'd turned around first to see them. Haise's body looked much more natural. It wasn't cocked in any one direction, though his head was down. He clenched the jacket in his right hand. He was talking to the ghoul, saying things she couldn't hear. He finished, and wiped his eyes. That sickly confidence was gone.

She watched him tear the jacket and wrap it around the holes of ghoul's body. That didn't really matter, she thought. He was gone. That relief she'd felt earlier was turning into pity, for Haise this time. There was no way he could fix what he'd done. She closed her eyes.

_Chomp_.

She'd taken a few steps before she opened them again. Her feet stopped. Haise cradled the ghoul's head with his hands, steel traps turned into deathbed pillows. The ghoul was latched onto Haise's shoulder, eating through muscle and sucking on bone. Haise gave him two quick palms to the head to knock him out, before taking the last of her coat and wrapping up his opened shoulder.

The ghoul would live.

They took the bullet train back about 8 hours after they'd got there. Haise's shoulder was probably a rotten mess, so Touka stayed away from it. She sat on his left side.

"You're an idiot Haise."

Like before, he rested his head on the glass of the window behind them.

He had a genuine smile, even if his hair covered his eyes.

"You're quite silly Tomoe. But I think I could get used to you."

She punched him in the stomach, full force. His body was hard as a rock.

"That hurt, eh!"

When he turned his head now, it wasn't the cocked back evil she'd seen earlier. No, he looked like Haise Saski again.

Juuzou Suzuya lived for these kinds of days. Following Haise and that ghoul there was a perfect idea. He'd made all kinds of new friends that day. The lower-ranked ones seemed to last longer than the big fish.

He held out the silver of knife under the chin of the little girl he'd carried with him all the way through the village of shacks and encampments, like Haise had seen.

"Little girl, I'm going to let you live. If you do that, will you be my friend?"

"Where's my mom? And my brother?"

"Oh they didn't want to come. They said I was weird. Do you think I'm weird?"

"No, but you smell weird. You don't smell like a ghoul or a human. You smell really good."

"Thank you! It's all the doughnuts I tell you! Would you like to try some?"

"Sure. But I should tell my mom…"

"I'll take care of it."

Juuzou lifted the little girl onto his shoulder and danced across the stair cases and hills back to the field with the train platform. He jumped on the very back, where there was steel grating for employees to stand. He dropped the little girl."

"There are two people on this train you've met, the real nice jacket guy and the ghoul who goes around with him. I'm playing a little game with them, would you like to play?"

"Sure!"

"Oii, my little cadet, follow them around, and don't get caught. When I find you, tell me what they did, okay?"

"You're not playing too mister?"

"Eh, I have to talk to your mom, remember! Just follow them around when they get off, okay?!"

Juuzou felt the arms of the little girl tug around his neck. A hug goodbye. He patted her head and gave her a smile. A happy smile.

"See you soon, little one."

He jumped off before the train picked up speed.

The next part was always the most fun.

Haise Sasaki sat in silence, alone essentially. Tomoe had fallen asleep on the way back. He never imagined that she actually slept.

Pretty silly, he thought.

He didn't exactly need time alone, though, considering he'd just had a run in with his nightmare again. The centipede he always dreamt of in real life? What a joke. A weird coincidence, but that burning under his skin when he found that old man, well, that felt familiar. Just like his nightmare.

When they'd boarded the train, the RC scanners went off, probably from his elevated RC count. Whenever he got angry or had a lot of stress, his RC would go up. It was a result of the team Q experiment. Akira had told him that a while back, and that he shouldn't worry about it.

Luckily no one had been on the train, so it was a bit of a moot point.

Tomoe looked peaceful, sleeping with her head against the window.

That's when he saw the smoke coming from the poorest region in the first ward. He'd dried up all his tears earlier. All he could muster now was pity.

"Oh Juuzou. You're quite the silly bastard."

**Author's note: I enjoyed writing this chapter. That is all.**


	6. Chapter 6 - Juuzou pulls a rabbit

Juuzou sucked the corner of his shirt collar on the way home. It was burned so it tasted like a little potato chip, and it looked like it was covered in chocolate.

He wondered if there was any pudding waiting for him.

"Why'd that Haise have to go and run away?"

Juuzou missed the Haise Sasaki that made him treats, like rice balls filled with strawberries and little cold boxes filled with red bean mochi. That Haise was fun, this one was kind of sad.

Oi that Miss Akira. She was the one who told Haise the news about his demotion. Juuzou remembered him smiling, but nothing like a normal Haise smile. Juuzou remembered stealing an ID once, from a guy named Kaneki Ken. His smile looked like that in the picture.

Like Haise didn't want to be at school anymore.

Ah, well, it was enough to chase him around. He wanted Haise to get back to being himself, but the ghoul was also really funny. She wasn't scared of him at cutting her up at all.

Suzuya was currently living in the 13th ward in an apartment above a café that sold all kinds of chocolate things, but he was staying in the first ward for a while. The chances of catching the Nutcracker while also extracting information about other Aogiri ghouls was rather slim at the moment, and killing her wouldn't be very fun. Lots of his men would die then, and for no good cause. Plus, she might kill him, which wouldn't be very much fun at all.

Though he doubted she'd have much fun either, huh mama?

The CCG had given him an apartment a block away from their headquarters, but he liked to sleep on their roof. The fire escape was a really pretty red color like an apple, and if he went up fast enough, his feet would slip and he'd get to hang there for a while. Sometimes he used his feet to climb up too.

When he climbed up to the top for the very first time, he found a couple ghouls camped out for Aogiri, tracking movements and scouting out top investigators. They had guns, so they lasted a really long time.

After that, he ripped off a bit of his shirt, and taped to a piece of notebook paper with his face drawn on. He did it himself, a fantastic artist. He wanted to do doodle cartoons for the papers really bad. He also wanted to be a baker.

He taped the piece of paper to the fire escape and waited every night. That was an entertaining few weeks.

Nobody showed up anymore, but he left the paper up. When he got to the top, he hoped for a ghoul or two to be going through his stuff, but it was empty.

Juuzou's little hideout consisted of a big comforter. It had a really cute penguin on it. He painted the eyes red and gave him a funny mustache.

He had box full of chips and little packaged treats too. He found some American sweets in a ghoul warehouse he'd raided a week earlier. He'd gone through them all. He had one pudding left. It was chocolate flavored. Really creamy.

He also had a flashlight to read. He slept late, so he liked to read poetry before he went to bed. He liked the ones that sounded like songs, and the Spanish ones he couldn't understand but could say in a funny voice.

He changed into an Olympics shirt he'd stolen from a cook in the 20th ward that was at least four sizes too big, and really furry pajama pants. They were red and yellow, with stripes. He laid down on his fluffy pillow.

"Sleep, sleep, come for me while I sleep, ghouls!"

Juuzou Suzuya was a peaceful sleeper. He tucked his arms inside his shirt, and locked a single picture frame his hands. It wasn't close to his chest. It was a safe distance away.

Akira Mado knew exactly where to look for her little bird Juuzou when she stepped outside the CCG that morning. He'd be on the top of the building, and she decided on climbing the stairs just like he did for some exercise.

He'd know something significant about the news that morning. If he hadn't caused it, he'd at least know who did it.

Her trip up the stairs was a rather clean one, slipping just once in the boots she'd worn. She hadn't slept at all the night before. It was a weird mix of picture frame conversations and flower arrangement making.

She also found that if she didn't sleep after drinking, she quite often had a solid outing of luck the next day.

"Hey, Juuzou, it's time to wake up!"

Her boots clicked all the way over to him. She tried crumpling the paper, and throwing that at him too. No reply. Crummy drawing anyway.

When she bent down, she pulled some of his hair back and saw the U shape of his smile. What a cute child.

How bad were his dreams?

He wore funny pajamas, too. She didn't know many investigators who had a set of pajamas. When he started to stir, she backed up a few feet.

"That's it Juuzou, we've got a big problem to deal with."

When his eyes opened, he let out a big groan, and jumped, landing with his toes on the edge of the building, hanging over for a few seconds.

"Oi Miss! Why are you here? Did you bring me a doughnut?"

Her eyes nearly popped out when she saw him jump over her and dig into her jacket pockets. He pulled out a little bottle.

"You know Miss, this stuff is nasty. I had a superior try to get me to drink this once, it was way too strong for me. Tasted like ghoul blood."

She clawed into his shoulders with her nails and gave him the biggest eyes she had.

"Oh Miss Akira, you're so funny. Now why the hell did you wake me up?"

He was hugging her, his small arms around her, but, she could smell a tinge of anger in his hair. Juuzou angry made the world seem a little wrong. Off kilter.

"Do you happen to anything about an entire slum on the northern side of the ward being burned to the ground? Well, that's a dumb question. How much do you know?"

"Oh, well that was me."

"Why the hell did you do burn a slum to the ground? Killing that many ghouls at once without any big fish doesn't represent any gain to us. Aogiri is going to respond to that."

"I know, they'll start doing cool stuff. Stuff like trying to kill me. Especially if they find out that I did it."

Juuzou wanted to kill these guys just as bad as she did. Sometimes she forgot that. They didn't have the same reasons, and they didn't always agree on how to do it. But, that didn't really matter in the end.

Moments like this made her feel like he was much more like her father than she could ever be.

"I admit it's more likely we'll be able to connect the Nutcracker with other Aogiri ghouls now. Perhaps we'll snag a few higher ranked ghouls. Maybe even Torso."

"Oh yes Miss. There will be a lot of meetings on both sides. But it'll get exciting real soon."

"Why were you over there anyway?"

"I was doing my duty as an investigator."

"You were following someone."

"I was following a doughnut. It looked really good. Lots of sprinkles."

"You were following Haise and his partner."

"Yes."

"What do you think?"

"She's a really powerful ghoul Miss. She stopped Haise Sasaki from changing into the Centipede really easily. Well, she made it look easy anyway. She cupped his face like this!"

She hated her cheeks being squeezed together. That made her teeth hurt.

"Yea, well I guess that's all we can gather for now. I supose your little stunt will bring out her kagune sooner rather than later. She'll suspect you off the bat, too."

"Oh, like baseball! Homerun! Of course she will. And I'll know when she's coming too! Though, part of me hopes she keeps it together. I want her to last a while. And I don't want Haise to freak out and do something stupid. He's funny."

She'd come to accept things that morning. Maybe she shouldn't have assigned a ghoul to Haise. He seemed lost to her now.

"Haise told me she hasn't come in yet this morning. Which means she's probably at least heard about what you've done."

"Oh, how interesting! Well I got a ghoul to follow her around, so I've got to go now! Bye!"

To ask how he'd arranged that would be a stupid question. Juuzou was capable of a great many things. He was hated, nearly everywhere he went by his superiors and peers, but somehow, to the average person on the street, Juuzou was a savior. He was the one person she'd met who relentlessly complimented people he didn't know, and not because he wanted something, but because he couldn't find a reason not to. People gravitated to that.

He didn't seem much like an investigator at all. Much more forward.

She heard the crack of a picture frame next to her after Juuzou'd run off with his clothes for the day. She looked over, still wrapped up in the confusion of a web of thought, and saw the Rabbit.

Juuzou managed to catch the Rabbit's second punch after he watched the ghoul sock blood straight out of Akira's stomach. Without her Quinque, Akira wasn't ready to fight someone like this.

"Oi, so you're the first one to show up, eh! I was hoping Aogiri might send a few of you. I'll make sure you don't last very long."

Keeping hold of the ghoul's right hand, Juuzou propelled his body forward wrapping up the Rabbit with his legs. He let go of the hand, and, while in a flipped over hand stand, sent the prey flying.

"You know I thought this might be the easiest place to get to me, so I was sure people would come here. I wish Miss Akira wasn't here though, I don't want her to die."

"Shut up Juuzou. Get out Jason, and kill this sick bastard. He's the one I –"

"Oi, you're alive, Miss! Save your strength. You'll be buying me breakfast soon"

Juuzou could feel the Rabbit's breath on his neck. It was warm. It felt so incredibly human. He was the Rabbit here, ready to be skinned.

"Shit, you're fast."

He felt the cracking of his ribs when the ghoul chopped him away with a left hand. That was a considerable amount of strength. More than Juuzou possessed, a few times over, even.

"Okay Jason, let's go. I've got something for you to eat. Otherwise, I have a feeling you and I are going to be swallowed."

Juuzou pulled out his favorite Quinque: a massive scythe that he whisked around, cutting ghouls from afar, and bludgeoning them from close up. It was heavy, but it cut like butter. Melted butter all over.

"Juuzou, you have to kill this thing now. It's killed too many investigators to live. Too many important people have died."

"Ghouls shouldn't live, Akira Mado, we agree."

Dancing around the field was quite a competition. The Rabbit was physically more able and much faster, but they couldn't bend like Juuzou, nor did they have a weapon that could stretch as long as his. Juuzou caught a few punches to the head, and the right side of his face leaked oil like a broken car, but he was still a little too flexible. He gave the ghoul's left arm three deep cuts.

He could feel anger and hope seep out of his opponent in return for frustration and resignation.

Juuzou's pupils expanded like popping balloons after a few more exchanges, as he saw the Rabbit flee down the fire escape when he missed a scythe swipe. A straight jump down landed the Rabbit in the alley way below.

"Oi Akira, I don't have time to tell anyone where you are, or carry you down, but please, survive. You remind me a little bit of my dad."

He gave her the biggest smile he had. It hurt quite a bit to do so, like he was leaving a comrade to die again. Wrong, or right decision.

Juuzou decided to jump straight down too, slowing his descent by cutting into the opposite building with his scythe. He could hear the metal chipping.

Juuzou didn't have a father, or so Akira thought. She knew about, "Mama," and Jason too. Even the alternate reality Rei, but never of any father. Juuzou seemed like the kind of person who'd resent his dad anyway.

She began to feel a little bit more than the hole where her stomach should be, like the shard of glass that had gone through her nylons. The Rabbit had crushed a picture frame. The glass had scratched across the person in Juuzo's only photograph.

She pulled the picture closer and stroked back her hair. She could feel the blood loosen up some knots.

"Shinohara huh. Oh my little bird."


	7. Lẚgrima

**Lẚgrima**

Touka's eyes snapped open when the bullet train started to decelerate.

"Kane-"

She'd slept and dreamed in front of Haise. Even worse, on a pragmatic level, she'd left herself completely vulnerable around a Ghoul Investigator. There was nothing to stop those hands of his from digging through her bag. She could say they were just drugs if he saw them. But, then, that raised the obvious question.

What if he wanted to try them with her?

No.

Where had Haise gone, anyway? She couldn't remember exactly when she'd blacked out, but as far back as she could think, he'd been on her right hand side, a few inches away. He wasn't there anymore. What if he'd gotten off? Did he just leave her on the train?

That was actually the best case scenario, in her mind. She needed a few minutes to wonder around outside shaking her head and regretting her train ride. She regretted falling asleep like a fucking idiot.

She grabbed her bag and got up, moving towards the exit doors that would slide open. The farther away she was from her stop, the better. The walk back to the Café would take a little while, and maybe, if it was late enough, she could stop by the bridge. The river deserved a thanks or two, for humoring her.

She felt the full effect of a heart's _thump, thump_ when she finally looked at the train's exit. Haise hadn't gone away; he leaned against a pole for strength. He'd been covering up a laugh for a while. She could tell. His cheeks were red shitty pencil erasers and his eyes were specks of pepper on egg whites. The yolk was beginning to run.

She walked over with her head down, and gave him a shove.

"What exactly is so funny, Haise Sasaki? Does watching me sleep really interest you that much? If so, I can tell you that was last chance you'll ever have, so I hope you enjoyed yourself."

To admit to falling asleep in front of him out loud was a scary proposition. It didn't make her feel any more secure. It was more of a question. _Did you see me fall asleep? You didn't, right?_

"Hey Tomoe, you've still got some drool on your chin!"

_HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA_

He'd lost his mind. He was bent over, holding the floor for support.

Her first reaction was a smile. A big one.

She wiped the spit from her lip, and punched the train, causing it to rock between the tracks. She hoped she hadn't just derailed them. But regardless, she got the momentary joy of watching Haise nearly crack his head open against the pole next to him.

Touka's stomach turned from soft tissue into grinding train brakes.

"Hey you know, sitting next to you and all… well what kind of perfume do you wear? I'd like to smell good too. Juuzou says I always smell like coffee."

She'd punched the train, and moved it.

"I'd like to smell like sweet candy. The watermelon ones always remind me of summer. Imagine that, an investigator who smells like summer."

Had she run out when they got on the train? Fuck. She couldn't remember. No, they'd gone off. But Haise laughed it off like he was the cause. _I always set them off after a day like today. Luckily no one is one the train, haha._ He didn't look sad when he said that. She wondered why he didn't seem down at all. No, now wasn't the time.

"You know, I read a book the other day about an investigator, or a detective rather, who had a funny mustache. Women made fun of him for it, because it was so cliché. You know, the author described it as one of those super hairy ones. But whenever he got close to a woman or man, regardless of who they were, his smell made them fall in love with him. It made for some difficult cases to solve. Normal people admitted to things they'd never actually done just to see him."

She'd have to wait till he got off. That was the only way. She'd let him get off first.

"Hey Haise, I don't think you know how little I care about how you smell."

She'd have to act like herself, exactly like herself if she was going to avoid being made for a ghoul. Haise had a bit of genius in him, he'd see through it. He was just that kind of idiot.

What he did next made life impossible.

Touka saw Haise Sasaki, a first-class investigator, twist and twirl around the train like a pinball in an arcade game. Finally he stopped, in the middle of the car, and floated up like a ghost.

"You don't care now, my dear, but soon, my smell will make you fall in love with me."

He pointed at her, with a sparkle smile made of glitter and a mustache cut out of construction paper. All he had were pants. Where exactly was he keeping this shit?

She punched the glitter off his teeth.

When he got back up, she saw the strip of her jacket come off too. She didn't want to look at his shoulder, but it made her feel guilty not too. He was extraordinarily brave.

She expected to see a puss filled gash where his muscle should be, but instead there was some fresh pink skin. It looked clean, soft to touch. She wanted to touch it. But she also felt sick.

If he still had all of the Centipede inside him, he'd never be able to run away. He could never just be Haise Sasaki.

The train finally halted, and she nearly made a move to get off, but she caught herself. Haise was moving slowly, motioning her to go ahead of him. He looked positively beaten. She waited until the conductor gave the warning to stay away from the doors, and grabbed him. She threw him out.

"I've got something I want to check out ahead! I'll meet you at headquarters tomorrow!"

He smiled and waved. He shouted something as the train chugged away. She wondered what he said.

She'd played herself perfectly. She didn't know what to say, so she'd just told a really easy lie. He always believed those. She hoped he always would.

Haise watched the train pull away, to wherever it was going, probably the city center. There were a great deal of things to do there, definitely things to be checked out.

So why did he know Tomoe was lying?

"Eh, no skin off my nose."

He didn't really care all that much. She was probably meeting a boyfriend, or maybe going to buy some nice books. Or maybe she was going to a movie with friends.

Nope, doesn't matter at all.

He resolved to go get some coffee, and buy some strawberries and rice. Well, actually, he didn't have a rice cooker anymore. Maybe there was a sweet shop open somewhere. Or perhaps he would really just get some coffee from the nearest place, and come back to the office and read. He had no business being out after the day; being around people made his chest feel like an iron trap that he wanted to escape. He wasn't sure want he wanted to feel all of the sudden, but he was sure he'd only get answers alone.

That was scary, too.

He found himself in front of Café :Re again. He didn't feel like he was cheating at all this time. He felt like he'd just been dumped, actually. He wondered if that old guy was there. The one with the goatee who'd stared at him. He'd like to talk to him.

When his hand was on the door, that's when he felt it. He felt someone's eyes on his back, relatively close. His back didn't itch. His eyes didn't hurt. He actually smiled. They were nice eyes. They didn't want to hurt him, it was almost like she was scared he was watching her.

He turned around and smiled, which to anyone else would have been creepy. He was smiling at a trashcan on the other side of the street. But, that trashcan tipped over when he started to wave, and he walked to the other side. There wasn't much traffic this late. People didn't want to be out when there where ghouls wondering about, even if this was the least populated ghoul area. The CCG wasn't omniscient. Some would argue too, that the CCG chose not to protect citizens on a regular basis.

He came upon a little girl with really soft eyes hiding behind the knocked over trashcan. She looked up at him, and sneezed.

"Hey, have you seen a girl named Yoko around here?"

"You remember my name?"

"Yea, of course, how could I ever forget you? Why'd you follow me out here Yoko? You're not looking for food, are you? Cause I don't want you to try to attack anybody."

"Attack somebody? What's that? Anyway, mister, can I ask you a question?"

She'd probably never been hunting. Her brother probably did all that. The poor girl was too skinny.

"Shoot for it."

"Why aren't you wearing a shirt?"

Haise leaped back into the street, narrowly avoiding one of the lone cars screaming through the street. He forgot to go back to his office and put an extra shirt on. He was wrapped up, and that was it.

It felt pretty good though. Humidity made wearing jackets pretty uncomfortable.

"Uh, you know, I guess I forgot to put a new one on. But that's not important, it's a human man thing you know. Don't stress out about it."

"Oh, well I want to try it."

Shit, Haise was really terrible with kids, awful with kids.

"NOPE. Sorry, but Yoko you are far too dignified for something like this. Royal bloods like you should never stoop to my level. Now forget about me, why are you here?"

"Oh, well I guess cause I lost the game I can say, huh?"

"Lost the game? You were playing a game?"

"Yea, the really cute white haired guy told me to follow you around. He smelled really nice, you know."

Getting off the train after injecting herself again was a welcomed feeling. She felt free, completely, now that she didn't have to worry about Haise anymore. Originally she wanted to spend time looking over files with him, for professional reasons of course, but, now, well she wanted to go home and sleep.

Injecting herself had been a pain, literally

She felt like, being alone, she was free to think her own thoughts. Haise seemed like he could read her mind sometimes. She was scared to think about ghouls at all, because he'd know. The inhibitors made her even more free, because she could walk wherever she pleased. There were no scanners to stop her. That made her feel guilty too, because, like before, most ghouls didn't have this privilege, but, she still took advantage. She walked the main streets in from of other coffee shops and bookstores. Maybe she'd get some novels to read. Her break from college was going to end in another month. It put a stamp on the amount of time she could spend as an investigator. She hadn't really thought about that.

Maybe if she kicked enough ass she could do both.

The bookstore reminded her of how her classes smelled at college. It was a creepy few moments. She thought about her literature class the fall before, and all the questions she got wrong. She thought about all the hours she spent reading the same books over again, and getting those questions right, mostly. There was a feeling that came with getting those questions right, like a soft heat against the outside of her chest. It wasn't like warmth, because it made her sweat. But it was nice. That kind of sweat was good. It made her. That's how she felt that day too; soft heat and sweat.

She picked up a book entitled, "**Lẚgrima**." The cover was a scruffy, pirate looking man, blindfolded. He looked pale.

She read the back. The story was about a pirate king being mutinied against, and left to die on an island. It seemed like a rather dull adventure story. It was small, too, so she could guess that he'd find a way off, and redeem himself. She sat down in the back to keep reading though. She liked these kinds. They were the ones where rays of hope shot down like burning light through muddy rivers.

The story was about a stranded Pirate king, yes, but she found that he'd actually elected to go to the island of his own free will. He begged the men to strand him. He'd led them through storms and raging winds, through death valleys and through mountain high waterfalls. The men recounted these things, but all the king could think about was those who died. He never thought about those he'd saved. So finally, the men agreed, they'd rather strand their king as the man he should be than watch him go mad.

They left him an axe, and offered that should he ever figure out all the great things he'd done on his journey, that he should come find them, that they would wait for him, at the port they'd first sailed from. He waved them goodbye.

On the island, the king felt quite content to simply die. To wither away and leave the world that he'd ruined. He tried not to eat, and not to drink; he even tried to let an animal kill him. But he found that he gathered berries as he went along, and searched for rivers to drink and bathe in. He could not stop trying to live. He was surviving despite himself. When he attempted to let the animal end him, so that maybe he could sustain life, he fought back, taking the animal for himself.

He was in complete misery. The will to survive that had carried him through life stayed with him when he wanted to die most. Life felt hopeless.

Touka still waited for the man to find a way off, back to his men. She wanted him to go back to that port. She was laughably sure it was going to happen. She was nearing the end of the book, anyway.

One day, while he sulked along the road without choice, looking for more food, he came upon a set of three animals. Or perhaps four. A female dog, presumably a mother, was protecting her young, standing bravely in front of him, from a wild boar. In the mouth of that wild boar was the lifeless, hanging body of another pup. The boar had successfully taken and killed one of her babies.

The king's initial reaction was to let out an enormous groan. Why was life this cruel, how could it be that a mother should live without her pup? Why should she be made to suffer such guilt? And how was it fair to her child? His mother would gladly trade places with him, so that he could live on, so why was he stuck hanging from a boar's teeth?

His groan seemed to scare the boar off, dropping the body of the pup. The mother picked up her living young, and walked by the carcass. She did not stop to grieve.

He realized that this mother could probably not bear to look at her dead child. To see such a thing would surely break her. To think about it would drive her mad. So she did not. She fought for what she had left. She could not allow herself to break in the face of a failure, because there was still something that required her to succeed. She was still needed. Perhaps when that pup had grown, she could go off and die.

Touka could sense the end, just a few pages left.

The king took to using the axe that he'd carried with him to chopping wood down and molding it. His men knew he would come back. They trusted in him to save them. They relied on his will to survive. When he'd finished a crude raft, he decided he could get back to his port, or at least to one close where he could acquire a ship. He tied his raft up, so it would not get taken by the tide, and packed a great deal of things on it. He decided to take the axe with him on the journey, so he packed it too. He slept on a rock just above it, like a baby,

When he awoke, he looked on in horror as the raft was gone. It had been taken away by the tide, along with everything that he had packed. When he looked for the cause, after, tying everything together, he saw that the rope had been chewed through.

Touka closed the book here, one page left to be unread. She felt sick.

She decided to buy it though, considering the idea that she'd just read it, nearly in its entirety for free. When she went to the counter, she saw the TV sitting beside the cash register while he rang her up. There was a great big wall of fire spouting up under the lens of a helicopter.

The sweat on her chest began to freeze, like she had a block of ice sitting over her soul. She left the cash she'd brought with her sitting in a little bag on the counter, and sprinted.

"Hey, what am I supposed to do about the change?!"

Touka's running seemed slow to her, dragged down by the ice block that just wouldn't melt.

She convinced herself that this was a pointless use of energy, and that by the time she actually got back home, it'd be time to go to the office again. She ran alongside the train tracks that were no longer in use. The ghouls were alright. They'd probably burned it down themselves. To get rid of the evidence. That was surely it.

The inhibitor she was using kept her from running at full speed, where she could outrun bullet trains. She shouldn't of used something so strong. She hoped there would be police by the time she got there, putting it out.

She had an absolute awareness of who she was in those moments leading up to the field. She was Tomoe Ayama now. She was weak, and she begged for a way to change that. She was human, powerless to stop what was happening just ahead of her. She wanted to be a ghoul in those moments more than ever before. She'd never wanted that in her past, actually.

She'd been breathing in smoke long before she got there. She'd smelled burning wood and trash far before setting foot in that field. Her eyes were focused on the ground the whole way there. Tomoe Ayama obeyed Touka's wishes not to believe what she didn't see. It wasn't until she got there, until she saw it with her own eyes, that her ice started to melt. She walked, in every sense of the word, towards the mass of flames in a trance.

There was nobody there, no police, no CCG, no fucking fire department to help. She could smell cooked flesh from where she stood. There were no screams. Those were long gone. She hadn't been there to hear them die. She was cursed with nothingness.

Touka became the Rabbit and the Rabbit became Touka. Tomoe was put to bed for a while.

It is far easier to sleep in one's bed when one knows a monster is there, than to open the closet door.


	8. It Rains

**It Rains.**

Haise Sasaki waited in his office for several hours past Tomoe's scheduled time of arrival. For investigators, there weren't actually hours of employment; the job seemed to take up 25 out of the 24 hours in a day, so what time someone showed up at headquarters didn't really matter. Investigators worked all the time and every place.

Still, he waited in his ripped leather chair, feet tapping the floor clean. He noticed his office was carpeted for the first time. It reminded him of his childhood home, a hidden gem in the hard, tile memories around him. He'd had too much coffee, definitely.

When he found Yoko the night before, he'd taken her inside :Re, which was, looking back on it, a terrible decision. As an investigator, he'd led a ghoul into a human establishment, full of people, employees and customers who had no idea who this little girl was.

An older couple patted her on the head, and one of the waiters gave her some free candy. It was wrong.

He'd also made the mistake of letting Yoko have a few sips of his coffee. She was camped out on his floor; he'd scanned her in with his badge and said he was the reason the machines went off.

Thinking about a lot of things, that's what he was doing. He was thinking about a lot of things to not think about what was outside. It'd been all over the TV, and he wanted to go to the burning collection of huts and sheds. He could smell hair burning when he got his coffee, and he saw blankets burn up over an old woman and her son's bones when he looked Yoko in the eyes.

He stopped looking her in the eyes.

Now, seeing her small frame on his carpeted floor made him rub his shoulder. Even his repentance has been a failure.

When he left his office, he locked it from the outside. He'd found out in his week of boredom before Tomoe showed up that it couldn't really be locked, but, if Yoko woke up while he was gone, she wouldn't figure it out. He lied to himself on that one.

He planned on being back long before she woke up, with his partner and the hardest apology of his life.

Stepping outside was all the rain that ever was or ever could be slipping in between the whites and blacks of his hair. He couldn't really see anything through the falling rapids, and he had no idea where to go. Café :Re was probably the best option, but he wondered if they were still open in this kind of weather.

It was the only choice he had.

He took two steps before turning around. He smelled blood, and not the blood of a ghoul, or just any human. He'd fought alongside Akira Mado so many times that he remembered the smell of her blood.

That smell was sweet on the tongue but sick in his stomach. It sat like rotten fruit in his gut. He hated it.

He couldn't really see her, but he felt her clinging to the wall for support when he got close enough to touch her. How far had she gone, clinging to the wall? How long had she been helpless?

A few inches from her face, he could see the blood coming from her lips, and he became her new wall. When she finally looked at him, her eyes looked nearly closed. Her left hand clutched a photo he had no shot in hell of recognizing.

"Haise, I need you to let me go now. I'm not helpless."

"No can do boss, It'd be embarrassing for me if I didn't act like a subordinate every once in a while. Keeping up appearances and all that. At least let me help you up to your office."

To suggest going to the infirmary now, well she might very well pass out. She didn't like doctors much.

"Haise, let me go, I'll find my way to the door, and then pass out. They'll carry me to the doctor's from there. Juuzou, he's chasing after the Rabbit alone. Go find him, and bring him back."

Haise's legs were like the wings on a bird in that moment. His heart was a stone. He could have gone anywhere, flown in any direction, he was physically limitless. But he didn't know what to do. He didn't know how to feel about his creepy friend who took treats from him, and then burned homes full of people to the ground.

Burned homes full of ghouls, right?

"Are you sure you can make inside alright?"

Akira cupped his face with her left hand. He could feel how damp the picture was; pieces of it remained on his cheek. Her palm was still warm on his skin. She was trying to come closer. He completed the hug for her.

"Don't let him die Haise. He's not Juuzou right now. He's angry, and he's hurt. That ghoul will kill him."

The warmth of her lips on the cup of his ear made his decision. Akira felt incredibly human in his arms. The woman who'd been too scary to be anything but his mother was asking him for something. She wasn't giving an order; she was pleading.

He gave her a kiss on the cheek.

"I'll bring him back, but I can't promise I'll kill the ghoul. Just make sure you get better, eh. I can't lose my partner now."

She stuffed the picture in his jacket suit, and leaned back against the wall. He could see her smile clearly, and her eyes looked open. He splashed away.

Just a few of those paces away, Haise ran into someone's arm, and felt damaged. It was like running full speed into quinque steel. He could only mouth a sorry as he continued moving, but along the way, his smell followed Haise forward. He recognized it, though he didn't know from where. Too late to ask now; he had no time to stop.

Akira Mado heard Haise splash away, and let go of the smile on her face that took the last bit of energy she had. Her injury was far worse than she originally thought. She could still feel blood coming up her throat.

She slouched against the wall, and wondered how long it would take someone to bring her inside. She was sure she wouldn't die, but, she certainly felt like it. She'd rather die in uncertainty, than hear that another one of her comrades had died, and she'd just sent one of those people she loved to a fight. Helpless; she was sure that feeling was colder than death, and far more alone.

She didn't hit the ground when she started to fall, though. She felt the warmth of someone's arm around her back, and cool metal under her legs. Someone with a prosthetic was carrying her in. A rather crude feeling, advanced prosthetic that she could feel shift with her weight.

"Not gonna let me die yet, huh?"

The person didn't answer.

"Do I owe you any favors?"

"A few."

Juuzou's hunt for fun with the Rabbit led him through city streets and alley ways alike, and it was even more enjoyable when it started to rain.

The hard droplets of water stung his eyes, probably because he hated swimming, and he lost sight of him. After that, he picked up his scent in the mud that splashed up under his feet. He remembered sitting under a bridge when he came to the first ward, and feeling dirt under his hands when looked out at the river. That dirt smelled the same.

Mr. Shinohara liked to look out at the river at night sometimes.

There weren't many places in the first ward Juuzou didn't know; he explored every crack in the wall when he'd been given his apartment. There wasn't anywhere the Rabbit could go that he couldn't find. Nobody could help the ghoul he followed, nobody could save him.

Juuzou actually took pride in his eyes; they were like huge flashlights at night. If he could smell it first, his eyes would adjust. So he closed those marbles of his, and smelled as hard as one could possibly smell. He searched for the scent of mud and trash, mixed with blood. Tasty blood. Along the way, he'd caught wind of a cake and nearly lost his mind, but he regained his focus.

The ghoul was just ahead of him, stopped like a brooding Italian statue. He opened his eyes in the rain, and he could see his prey. That left arm was still bleeding, but it looked much less, well, bloody and more wet thanks to the rain.

Juuzou thought about how nice people looked in the rain, when the hair on their arms was wet. They were like small fountains, put together perfectly organic. People were like that, organic down to a ceramic core. Cores could be smashed up.

He also saw this ghoul had a very slender arm. Muscles and veins popped out, but it was still small.

"You look like me ghoul! That's kind of cool!"

He wondered if the ghoul could hear him.

"OI. Who took your balls ghoul boy?!"

He noticed how small this ghoul was. When Juuzou thought about the Rabbit, he pictured a great big ghoul in a funny rabbit suit. The suit had a ripped left ear and stuffing made of cotton candy came out.

"Did you burn them alive?"

"Well yea, but you knew that. Trying to make yourself feel less guilty?"

No reply.

"Don't worry, if you kill me, no one will hold it against you. Nobody likes me! They all want me to die. Plus, I'll deserve it. Nobody will miss me, okay?"

_But you won't kill me ghoul_.

No, Juuzou had no plans on dying there.

Pin missiles flew at him, and one caught his arm. He felt the blood squirt all over the floor. They were in a clearing, surrounded by some broken buildings. Juuzou could see the sky.

He'd never been there before. How long had they been running?

While he tried to recover from his first wound, a knee rammed straight into his stomach. His insides were dancing, funny things. He staggered back and fell down.

"You're pretty strong you know, Rabbit. You're real fast. But you know something, I really want to kill you. I don't even want to cut you up."

He got up, and took some needles to his left knee. He exploded forward.

His eyes felt funny. He felt like the sky, raining hard. Why was he crying?

"_I WANT YOU TO DIE!_"

Why was he crying? It hurt.

The Rabbit wrapped up his scythe with a wing from his back, and cracked the handle into pieces. The wing caught his right hand and he felt the bones break apart.

It hurt so bad to cry.

He sunk his teeth into the Rabbit's neck and went limp. His body was still against the ghoul.

He unclamped his teeth.

"Why did you hurt Mr. Shinohara, Mr. Ghoul?"

A quick jab when through his stomach made his eyes feel dry again. How fun.

The Rabbit was gone, out of Touka's body for the moment. The blood on her hands didn't feel warm. She was alone and cold in the pouring rain, just like all the times she'd taken revenge for the ghouls in the past.

She felt more alone and helpless here, with her hand through Juuzou, than she did when she watched his flames eat an entire village up.

Her eyes weren't focused, and her lens took everything in at once. She could see Juuzou's mouth smiling while watching the sky simultaneously.

Why was he smiling?

She speared him a few times more before dropping his body. She wanted the rain to stop. She moved to take her mask off; now that Juuzou was dead, she didn't have to worry.

"HEY!"

Great, someone was there. She didn't want to kill anyone else. Maybe if she ran, she could avoid them.

Arms grabbed her before she could move anymore, and her arm got stuck in position. Juuzou's blood was glued to her cheek.

How'd they get so close? They sounded like they were a minute or two of running away a minute before.

"Where's Juuzou, Rabbit? If you tell me, I'll let you run away. I will let you go for him."

He hadn't seen the body yet. She forced her hand away from her face and motioned down.

She felt his arms loosen, and eventually drop. His knees hit the floor, and she thought it sounded painful. He crawled a few inches to him, and stroked his hair.

The back of his hair, and the fit of his coat around his shoulders, Haise Sasaki was there.

How did she not know? How did she not recognize his voice from the first word, and how had it felt so far away?

She didn't want to run anymore, though she could have. Her legs were still strong, but she made them collapse. She wanted to cry into the back of his jacket. So she took her mask off.

She cried into the back of his suit jacket, while he stroked Juuzou's hair.

His back was cold and wet on her face, but it was hot under her right hand. She could feel it getting hotter.

_Run._

What a harsh word. Her back hit the wall when she jumped away from his kagune.

_Fuck._

Yea, she liked that word better. It coincided with whatever she was watching happen to Haise Sasaki.

She remembered the feeling in her chest when she believed that he'd survived the Aogiri incident.

A lot of people called it courage.

It was far similar to fear. She didn't want to imagine living in a world where he wasn't alive. When he'd left the Anteiku the first time, at least she knew he had people around him who couldn't let him die. She grew quite fond of Tsukiyama for going with him, then. She knew he was alive, so she didn't let herself hurt while he figured himself out.

When she saw him at :Re, she made herself pity him. If she felt sorry enough for him, well, she wouldn't have room to feel anything else.

Whenever he left, she felt angry, so angry with him for showing up again. She'd wanted Kaneki Ken back for so long, and Haise Sasaki talked like him, smelled like him and looked at her like he did. Why didn't it feel exactly the same then? Why wasn't he Kaneki? Why was he hunting ghouls? He came all that way, learned everything he did, just to swing all the way back to the beginning?

And yet, she couldn't stay away.

Well, that was going to end on a rainy day, in a ward one clearing. She was going to fight what they called the Centipede, and either kill Haise Sasaki along with it, or die.

She thought for a few seconds about the ghouls she could save if she ran now, but, for this moment, Touka had to be selfish. To continue to live alone was far too cruel for her.

The Rabbit's wing had faded away, but Touka Kirishima was much stronger than any cute little animal in this moment. Her left wing shot out, full of fire like a brilliant galaxy, recharged.

The feeling of her right wing sliding out of her skin felt like she'd come home again. It'd never happened fully before, and yet here it was, familiar. Her eyes rolled back for a few seconds. This was the right decision.

To stay and kill Haise was the right decision. She plunged into a fight with a rather large Centipede.


	9. El Ciempés

**El Ciempés**

Juuzou felt quite tired, and far too wet. He knew if he stayed out in the rain too long, he'd have to go back home and push some of the water out from under the holes in his skin.

He wanted to get up, go home and take a shower, but he felt like a giant paper weight. He could be moved but not move. That was rather annoying. Rain also made him smell weird. Ghouls didn't like how he smelled after the rain.

He decided to try it one finger at a time. Right thumb… right index… nope.

_Oh, that hand's been cracked to bits_.

He could still smile. When he tried to open his mouth, there was soggy paper. He tried to spit it out, but his lungs felt like ripped paper bags.

_Oi, I see, I've been stabbed._

He didn't actual know if his eyes were open or not. If he tried to open them, all he got was black, and when he was sure they were closed, he felt little rain drops break apart the gunk he'd left in that morning.

_Oh, there you are left hand. Tell me everything!_

He felt around his belly with his left hand. Such a cute word, belly. He liked to rub his belly periodically. It felt warmer than usual today. He realized he was touching his insides.

There was no point in moving then. Stitching himself up like this, well that felt impossible. If his eyes didn't work, maybe he could smell and hear a story.

His nose was full of blood, and he tried to uncork it, but again, all he got was blood out of his mouth, and his fingers weren't strong enough.

Plus, he didn't very much like to pick his nose.

He could hear quite a bit going on around him.

_EAT HER, EAT HER._

No. I won't do it. We're only here for Juuzou.

_Juuzou's DEAD._

Yea but Tomoe had nothing to do with that, she wouldn't ever do something like that. She's an investigator!

_You let little Juuzou died. Akira trusted you. _

I'm aware of that. I will pay for that. I will die for that. But she's innocent.

_Oh Haise, you haven't figured it out yet have you?_

Figured out what?

_I'm going to show you now. Watch through my eyes. _

No, even if she did kill Juuzou, I can handle this myself. I can't eat her.

_Too late Haise Sasaki. You can't hide anything from me._

Stop it!

_You're just like the other boy._

No, don't, please. I promise, I'll give you anybody else, but don't eat her.

_I'm going to eat her now Haise. And once I do, and you see what she really is, you won't be able to hold me back. _

You and I aren't the same you bastard.

_And yet, to kill me, you have to die. _

He didn't know what to say to that. He'd always thought it was for the safety of his team that he be placed under the care of Akira. She could use excessive force to protect CCG assests like his former pupils, but why now? Why was he even alive now? He was useless as an investigator.

That must have been what the Centipede wanted, for him to doubt the CCG, because the more he thought, the farther he slipped into himself. The back channels of his mind felt like a moist cocoon, warm around his body. He wasn't wrapped in a damp suit anymore. He was entirely Haise Sasaki, a cracked egg, seeping yolk into the world.

Touka remembered kids during the lunch period at school when she was young bringing pieces of lunch meat for their food. She saw them split one piece of turkey into two, and she always wondered how that happened. She'd never had food like that. Unfortunately, she either ate human meat or quite expensive looking gourmet food she had to throw up.

She knew now how they did it now. Her shoulder split open like lunch meat ready for a sandwich.

The worst part wasn't the ripping up of her muscle, or her even the cracking of her bone. No, the worst part was that she could feel air, cold air bite at the insides of her shoulder. Her left arm was useless.

"You're really strong Haise, I never imagined it could get this bad."

He had two tails with tips like electric knives for carving up big poultry. She could see them grind into the ground like mammoth insects whenever he missed her.

"Sure you don't want to let me kick your ass in the sewers again?"

She didn't need her arm, luckily. In fact, using her arm was a really stupid idea, even for her. She'd probably lose it completely if she got close enough to land a punch.

She knew pretty early on in the skirmish that shooting at his tails was a pretty awful idea. They didn't seem like they could be damaged, and every time she shot at them, they made this awful screeching nose. She felt them curl up in the back of her mouth like little centipedes. She could hear them crawling.

She also found that the crystals she shot out of her right wing were much stronger than her left, but they were also slower, and made her want to take a nap with a pretty nice wool comforter Hinami gave her at Christmas.

All the jokes she was telling herself couldn't stop the gnawing realization that she'd have to hit Haise Sasaki's actual body with these right wing crystals. He was exceptionally fast, but, she knew she could hit him.

The ultimate test of her determination was grating chalk in her soul.

_If I hit him with these, he will die. _

If she chose not to hit him, he would gore her. The Centipede would kill her.

The fastest and naturally most dangerous way to get a shot at him would be to stand perfectly still, and fire out of her left wing. The Centipede didn't seem capable of reading tactical maneuvers, and he seemed rather fond of getting close to Touka.

_He probably wants to eat me. _

When she skidded to a stop, she smiled. Maybe she'd eat Haise Sasaki; wouldn't that be a turn of events?

His rush at her was linear, just as she expected. She could feel the hard enamel of his teeth on her neck from what seemed like miles away.

She wondered what Haise felt in there. Did he feel those same teeth? Did he have teeth like that?

She took the scalpel end of one tail directly into her gut, and grasped onto it. Losing her stomach hurt far worse than the shoulder did.

The light in front of her eyes dimmed, and it became increasingly harder to see in the rain. She saw the Centipede moving along his first tail, and his second one cocked back.

This was her only chance before she blacked out. She was stupid for taking one straight in the gut. There was probably some safe, tactical way to go about it.

When her right eye caught the tail zooming in, she fired out of her left wing directly underneath it. Juuzou's body flew towards the alley entrance. She thought she heard him grown.

She couldn't pierce the tail, but she did send it reeling back from underneath. One side of the Centipede pulled back with the tail.

Her hands let go of the first tail, and her legs seemed to bend in several places. She felt like she was taking a test in school after a night of no sleep. She laughed at her answers.

She fired out of her right wing.

She half expected those shots to miss, but as far as she could tell, she'd actually managed to land them on his chest. Some grazed past, but he went flying right along with them.

Touka couldn't collapse completely. She knew she had to leave soon, now that she'd won. If she'd beaten the Centipede, she had to run before any CCG showed up. She couldn't risk the café being discovered.

On her knees, her eyes were drawn to Juuzou.

_I got you, didn't I, bastard._

Getting up and walking away were incredibly taxing, and Touka wasn't sure she'd make it back home alive. She just wanted to pass out where nobody would find her.

Getting eaten sounded better by the second.

The screech she heard behind her scared that idea out of her. Maybe she didn't want to be chomped up like ground hamburger.

She couldn't see far into the rain anymore, thanks to her eyes. They felt like they were shut now. It was hard to tell the different between shut and open when she was this close to dying. She'd lost a lot of blood.

But she could still feel, and she felt the cool edge of his tail against her calf. He was behind her.

"You're fast Haise."

She felt the cool bone of his mask against the side of her face, and his breathing in her ear. His breaths were like a dying computer fan, spinning out of control. The air was hot enough to burn her skin.

"I don't think I can fight back anymore, you know."

She could feel blood seeping through the back of her shirt. She'd caught him in the chest, just as she thought.

"I think I owe you one too. You gave me a bite in a chapel incident a few years ago. That one changed my life."

She stretched her head to the right, and left her neck uncovered.

And then she felt Centipede let go. Her right ear was ringing, and her knees locked in place. Someone had fired a shot.

She staggered back after a few seconds holding her ears with both hands. The CCG had probably been aiming for her, and missed. Her mask, her mask, where was her mask? It'd probably been blown up when she clipped the Centipede's tail.

The best she could do was sink into a dark crack between two building and watch. She covered her face, in some pointless attempt to keep from being discovered. One eye peered out from between her fingers.

In between the rain drops, she made out a fairly large man with jet black hair. She could tell from this distance that he was in excellent physical condition.

There was no way in hell she could even put up a fight.

He moved forward and out of her sight, probably to Haise.

_Haise_

She hadn't thought about what he looked like after that shot. Not dead, at least. The Centipede probably took the brunt of that one.

Either way, there was no escaping death if she'd been seen crawling into that crack. So she leaned her head back and closed her eyes.

Maybe he'd just walk away.

Her left ear still worked well, though the rain made things that were far away a little less audible. The footsteps were coming. She could see the mud on the bottom of his shoes in her head.

_Right where I belong, on the bottom of a shoe, huh human?_

"So you're a ghoul too eh?"

She felt a hand wipe away some of the blood on her right cheek.

When Touka opened her eyes, she saw a man she'd fought before.

_I kicked his ass._

She remembered killing his subordinate.

"You're the Rabbit, I suppose. You know you killed a few of my friends once. Well, you killed my friend, and then you killed my mentor."

"Your friends were sick bastards. They killed the parents of little girls and then turned them into puppets. So fuck your friends and you."

"Yea, I agree."

What.

"You know, I don't think they were bad people, deep down though. When you live next to someone long enough, I guess you figure out what their real truth is."

She didn't have a retort for that one. It was true. She remembered watching Kaneki Ken figure her out day by day.

"I think the only person I've met who's had the world figured out is this stupid Eye-Patch."

Haise was bent over his right shoulder, unconscious.

"What are you going to do with him?"

"I'll let him sleep it off. Anyway, I've gotta go. This other guy's dying."

He she saw the black of Juuzou's hair hanging over his shoulder.

She didn't say anything when he walked away, but she saw the white and black of Haise's hair in the rain. She tried to smile.

Juuzou could see the ground. He was flying like a superhero.

He couldn't move his arms up to soar though, they wouldn't cooperate.

"Hey Juuzou, stop moving, it makes me uncomfortable."

Juuzou couldn't turn his head, but he recognized the voice.

"I thought you were supposed to be dead investigator Amon."

"When you move more of your blood comes out. I can feel it on my shoulder punk."

"Does she know you're back yet?"

"Yea, I've seen her."

"If I could move, I'd cut your throat myself."

"I'm all yours after you get better Juuzou."

"Good."

Juuzou went back to sleep.


	10. Hello Goodbye

**Hello. Goodbye.**

The top of the room looked like peppered jam, spread from one side to the other.

Haise didn't particularly feel like eating peppered jam. The thought of it alone wasn't so bad; a little bit of burn on something like sweet toast might be a nice change of pace, but it was his stomach. He'd been pumped full of something that sat in his throat more like slime than jam.

His hand rubbed his head against his will; he didn't want to know what kind of shit he'd gone through.

But it kept moving.

There was no gaping hole, no stitched mess. His head felt the same to the palms under his fingers and his teeth were all locked in place when he felt those too.

But inside his skull his brain felt hot, and when he ran the tip of his tongue across his teeth, he tasted metal.

What a weird taste on jam.

He got the urge to look around the room all at once, rushing out of the IV in his left arm. To the left was the door to the room, a sliding white piece under the blackness of the jam. If Haise looked too long at it, the colors turned into shapes that expanded and morphed.

It was obvious he was very tired. And drugged.

When he looked to the right, there was another bed, kept for another person, or rather unkempt by another person. The blankets were wrapped up in a ball, and then unwound at the top, like a little kid had played fort. There was an IV, unhooked from its owner, and several pudding cups under some pillows that could only be seen from his bed.

Very clever.

He felt the warmth of a body in his sheets and blankets the crawled up to him, much like a puppy. Juuzou's head popped out next to his.

The IV ripped out and an alarm went off. Panic ensued.

When the doors slammed shut again, and the IV back in his arm, Haise let out a laugh much like a wet cough.

Juuzou's smile curled up and his eyes closed up alongside the right of Haise's bed. He'd watched with a particular fascination when the put the IV back in Haise's arm.

"I've never seen one of those put in. I'm always asleep," he said.

"They're kind of annoying; they hurt after a while."

"Oh, that sounds fun. What does that feel like?" he said.

Juuzou clutched Haise's blankets, and then bit them in anticipation.

He wanted to know, and it was like his hands and mouth, no, the entirety of his biology couldn't express how much he wanted to know. It was a lot like wonder.

Still, after Haise peered into his soul, Juuzou got bored. He gave him a slap on the head.

"Where's silly Haise? Are you sure they didn't do anything to that thick brain of yours?" he said.

"Silly Haise is tired Juuzou. Hey, you got any of that pudding left?"

"Not for you," he said.

"I'm not hungry anyway."

"Does the ceiling look like jam to you? It looks like jam to me," he said.

"Yea, it does, a lot like jam."

"I bet that makes you want to throw up, with all the junk they put in you. I've eaten that stuff before, it made me sick," he said.

It was a funny notion to consider Juuzou's stomach of sugar-coated iron getting nauseous thanks to any sort of medical slime.

"What is it?"

"AH, it's to limit your RC count," he said.

"Why did you eat something to limit your RC count? You're not a ghoul. That sounds terribly dangerous."

"Well, they fed it to you, so I wanted to eat it. Hey, what happened to your hair?" he said.

Juuzou was now sitting cross-legged on the bed with Haise. It was a fairly small bed.

He grasped at Haise's hair, and pulled. He kept asking about it.

"What's wrong with it Juuzou? I can't see it you know."

He pulled a mirror out of his tunic.

"Why do you have that?"

"Ghouls are more partial to people who look pretty," he said.

Haise thought about asking him why he would have it in a hospital. He reasoned that Juuzou was aching to find ghouls anywhere, and that he probably wasn't wrong in thinking there could be some on a hospital staff.

Though, a ghoul on the CCG staff would be very strange.

He took the mirror and examined the mess of hair atop his head; it seemed longer than he remembered it being. The white bits were grown out, and came down below his eyes, while the black strands that erupted from the center of his crown were more visible.

If he got his usual haircut, his hair would be black. He pictured that in his mind, tried to run his hands through all black hair.

It was familiar, the coarseness of it felt like home in between his fingers.

That coarseness was the last grain of sand trickling out of Haise's hand. That feeling was empty again.

"I guess we'll match pretty soon, huh Juuzou?"

"Yea, that's pretty boring. I'll dye your hair white again," he said.

"I'm not sure I want it white again, Juuzou."

"I'll do it while you sleep then," he said.

Haise felt like himself in that moment, his smile was distinctly his. The coarseness that was home washed away with a moment of laughter.

His gut also laughed, and pushed up the slime into Haise's mouth. He swallowed.

The shifting colored door from earlier on Haise's left burst open.

"Oi Juuzou, perhaps you should be in bed, huh?"

Seeing Akira Mado with a brace around her stomach didn't make Haise any less scared. Her eyes burned even more now than they had before, and his eyes began to sweat just as much as his back stuck to the sheets of his bed.

Juuzou sat just the same.

"No, Miss Akira, I like sitting here. Haise's back to normal," he said.

Haise remembered how he hadn't liked the things Juuzou was doing or saying much over the last few weeks. Despite the slime that lined his chest, sitting her with Juuzou felt normal again.

He was happy. Perhaps, that was normal.

"Oh is he now?" she said.

The brace that covered her stomach told Haise that he'd been out for a while. She was in terrible shape when she'd sent him off to find Juuzou.

The Rabbit.

"Akira, what happened to the Rabbit? I didn't kill him, did I?"

The clacking from underneath her feet calmed Haise. When he heard someone clacking in the street, his nose twitched with the smell of her perfume. She was ingrained in him.

She smelled good, too. She and Juuzou were alike in that way.

By the time she leaned over to look into his eyes, he was sure he'd caught the Rabbit. Akira's existence told him that he hadn't messed anything up, that he hadn't lost himself entirely, just yet. She rubbed his head and ran her hands through the white remains of his old hair.

"Man, Haise, it's sad that you never remember anything. Do you lose a lot of stuff?" Juuzou said. His eyes looked out the open door Akira had been standing in. He rubbed his stomach.

"You did a good job Haise. Rest now and we'll talk about what happened later," she said.

Haise felt entirely sick after that. He knew he'd done something wrong.

"What about my partner? Where did Tomoe end up?"

Akira let go of his hair and walked away then.

"Seems she was sick that day. She stayed home a few days, but she's worked harder than I could've imagined since she got back," she said.

"Harder than you?"

"I wouldn't go that far, eh Haise," she said.

Haise didn't burn under her gaze anymore. He saw sweat in the pocket of her upper lip, probably from the pain of moving around. Her hair was just a little bit off, and a single blond strand floated over her face.

He caught pain behind the dulling fire in her eyes, far more than he'd ever seen before.

Akira told Amon to wait in her hospital room, right in the chair where he'd sat for the last week.

He waited just beside the door to the outside world.

There was no clacking of her heels when he heard her coming. It was a shift on the tile from her nylons that made him ready, and when she opened the door, he steadied his right arm to catch her.

He saw the sweat on her forehead and the strands of hair that stuck to the side of her face. Her hands dropped the heels she was holding, and she hunched over grabbing at her brace. For a moment, Amon could see the heat from her body steaming off the metal of his arm, melting away the steel.

But he could feel nothing.

He carried her over to bed. The CCG seemed like it'd be without a fully functioning Akira Mado for a while.

"You're making some terrible decisions, Akira."

"I could sure use some coffee right now Amon, be a good boy," she said.

"I'm leaving you 4 cups full of water. That'll last you until your nurse comes in. Make sure you tell her I'm not going to be around for a while. She'll come more often that way."

"Did you get the wheelchair? What about the wig? I don't want Haise to notice you when I'm wheeling you around," she said.

She didn't have her eyes open. The skin around them was runny like egg yolks, cooking on the stove. He wiped her forehead.

"I'll see you when you get better, Akira. I'll make sure they keep your office clean."

"So you're really just going to leave?" Her eyes were soft then. It was a real question, and her tone demanded an answer.

"I'll be taking Haise and Juuzou with me. They appear to be much healthier than you. Maybe you should watch what you eat."

"Fine, I'll consent; take me out in a wheel chair. For the CCG, I'll give up my dignity," she said.

"Oh, character growth I see. Been reading a lot of books while I've been away, Akira?"

"Make sure you take care of him Amon. His RC count was akin to the Centipede's this time. If he gets that out of hand again, I'm not entirely sure we'll be able to stop him without killing him," she said.

She wouldn't look at him, but it seemed far more a question that an announcement. _Are you strong enough to beat the Centipede now?_

Yes.

The last few words they said to each other didn't matter much to Amon at the moment. He had a great deal to take care of, including the singed metal on his right arm.

Haise quite enjoyed the idea of changing in a hospital closet. It made him feel like the detective who's just been shot, returning to a battle that can't be avoided. Now that he'd thrown up all the slime in his body, he missed the spicy jam toast from the room outside, though.

The pushing of his hands through the white of a suit jacket felt good. His fingertips felt each stitch on the outside, the threads of his existence sewn into one simple jacket. He brushed away strands of hair from his eyes. He wasn't going to cut it; the white suited him. Maybe he would let Juuzou dye it.

His heart beat hardest when he fitted a black, skintight leather vest under his shirt and jacket. He clicked belt buckles closed across the chest when he finally got it on, and they dug into him a little bit.

But under the white of the CCG outfit, that leather faded with the beat of his heart.

He'd been instructed to wear it by a special investigator whose height was only matched by the bulk of both his arms and the jet black quality of his hair that wasn't quite long or short. When a man like that gave him instructions, Haise was not particularly inclined to disobey them.

When he finished lacing his boots and opened the door, he saw Juuzou and the new investigator conversing over a list. Juuzou was in his usual black attire. His stitches looked aggravated.

"So what's your name, investigator?"

"Koutarou Amon. Call me Amon," he said.

"Is there anything I can do for you Mr. Amon? I'm actually just a third-class investigator, and I already have a partner. Juuzou's probably far more useful to you than I."

"Haise, we're going to get the Nutcracker, and the ghouls she's been working for." That time, it was Juuzou.

"I'm sure you will Juuzou, and so it seems you don't need my help."

"Your partner will be meeting us in about an hour at a café she frequents. It will take just about the four of us to perform this job at a relatively safe pace. You don't have to join us, but the way for your partner will be a lot more dangerous without you," Amon said.

Haise wasn't really surprised when he heard that; Amon seemed a bit overqualified to be just a special class investigator. His aura demanded respect, because it exuded desperation. He was desperate for his plan to work; it was easy to see he had obviously exhausted every option.

"What do you want me to do, Koutarou Amon?"

"You're going to help me kill the Nutcracker, today, Haise Sasaki, just like you helped me kill the Rabbit."


	11. Softest Hands

**Softest Hands**

Sitting at a table in her own café was a very surreal experience for Touka, who wasn't one who allowed herself such things.

She caught the hints of coffee being brought out in waves, much more a smell than the air she needed to breathe when working inside. Behind the counter and in the back, Touka's nails were little brown bits of coffee dust and her hair was bathed in coffee shampoo.

She licked a speck off one of her nails when she took a look at her hand. It tasted bitter; though, she smiled, simply because any other expression was a straight line to a hell of embarrassment.

Waiting was certainly a bad thing for Touka.

To get over the fact that she'd been waiting for Amon and Juuzou for quite a long time, she tried to think as Tomoe Ayama would. She took out a sketch book, and drew in the quiet of an average day at :Re people came in waves, just like the fumes of the coffee from behind the counter.

Though it felt hazardous to her health considering she wasn't actually serving that day, the coffee did smell quite good.

Perhaps brown nails weren't so bad?

About half an hour after she'd started her sketch, the door rang open, and she could feel the metal of Amon's arm on the underside of her tongue. It was like a little steel ball was jammed in her mouth and she just couldn't get it out.

She was seated in the far back, away from the normal paying customers in a booth so they could all chat more openly.

That's how Tomoe Ayama would run the ship.

Touka Kirishima laughed behind investigator eyes. Oh, if only they knew.

She didn't look up to see Amon and Juuzou coming, because the heavy click of Amon's shoes on the floor and the little patter of Juuzou's feet were fat wrinkles on the surface of her brain. No amount of coffee stains could undo that.

The heavy steps Amon took reminded her of the dramatic ending in one of her favorite rock songs. She felt her stomach shred like a dying puppet string, tied to the finger of the guitarist whose sole job was to finish the song.

The feeling always left her feeling empty. It was sickening, flying face forward into a blankness, while pretending to feel anything at all about one last guitar solo. She hated when songs ended.

She didn't like music very much, actually.

Kaneki liked music very much; she could feel the warmth of his breathe when he sang along to his Ipod in the room next door to her apartment. He always tried to hide it, so she listened with her ear against the cool paper of the wall.

Juuzou's footsteps made cold bumps pop out of her skin and brought the fingers of her own hand up to her throat. Her teeth grinded together and she nearly let out a whimper. It didn't matter who she chose to be in that moment, because regardless of all the blockades she set up, like learning the sounds of his steps or pretending to be occupied, she still felt the curve of his blade in her hand.

He made her want to cut her own throat.

The steps she heard after that made her fingers uncoil, and her head tilt back. Her neck was exposed, and her eyes closed.

The cool of the metal seat that frightened her thighs when she first sat down felt like the hot wood of some of the benches behind the Anteiku.

She remembered stepping out to find Kaneki a few minutes over his break with a book in his hands. She hit him once with the toe of her boot. There was a little bit of blood.

The warmth of the wood whenever she sat down always pissed her off.

Wood wasn't supposed to be warm.

"Oi, Tomoe! It's been too long!" Haise said.

She thought back to the ghost Haise floating around on their train ride back to the CCG headquarters. She didn't know how to feel about that, so she stuck a butter knife in his shoulder.

"You need to cut your hair, investigator."

She wasn't expecting Haise. She didn't expect him back for a while, and at least far longer than a week.

His hair had grown so much in only a week?

"I just checked out of the hospital, Tomoe!" he said. She couldn't make out his pupils in the slits of his eyes, and he was glued to her hand.

No matter how much she kicked his face, he wouldn't let go.

The shift of the table when Amon sat down unhooked his fingers, and made the feet in Touka's boots curl. He was massive, built with more muscle than she'd ever seen on any ghoul, including Yomo, or that ghoul Yamori, and that muscle must have been a pain to carry around.

How could he move during a fight with a ghoul?

He left his right hand on the table, and the mechanical tapping of his steel fingers made her bones vibrate. She felt the vibration along the side of her neck.

"Special investigator Amon, I assume you've come with a plan, so let's get that knocked out of the way first."

"Well, I figured I'd consider the input of all the investigators here before deciding anything concrete," he replied. His voice was like concrete pasted over the burial of every ghoul she'd ever met.

Touka was losing control of her senses.

"I was just assuming that you'd have a plan, considering you were the one who strong-armed me into…"

She could feel the wet skin of a ghoul child's hand after taking a bath. She could smell the soap bubbles on the top water that the child's mother had prepared.

"I value your opinion, because I value Haise's opinion. So let's go over all the facts we know, take in all the opinions at the table, and then come up with a plan," he said.

"WAIT!" Juuzou said. There was a pocket of sweat building up in little teeth marks where he'd been biting his upper lip. He'd wanted to talk for quite a wall now.

What was he holding in? Did he know about her, like Amon did?

She realized that didn't matter much at all. Either Haise knew about it and didn't care, which was the greatest option, or Haise knew and didn't care. She'd quit if such were the case.

The only opinion she valued was her own. Haise's came a distant second, but it was still on the mailing list.

"WE NEED TO ORDER TREATS! It smells like Haise's pockets in here!" Juuzou said.

Touka watched Juuzou drag Haise away laughing. Both of them were enjoying being together.

_Very odd._

"This is a very odd situation, seeing another ghoul, not to mention the Rabbit, dressed in the guise of an investigator. Though, I guess it makes sense for you," Amon said. The muscles in his neck were like rotating razor blades when he talked. His words cut through the awkwardness of tension like butter.

She wished she could do that.

"How do you figure it makes sense, and what do you mean by, 'another' ghoul?"

"Forgive me, I guess my strong suit isn't the Japanese language; I simply meant that after seeing so many ghouls try so many different jobs to fit into society, it's both odd to see this, and odd that this is the first time I've seen it. But I guess you're not in it to fit in, are you?" he said.

His hair looked quite a bit like Nishio's did when she first met him. He'd let his black hair grow out, and it made him look quite young in a full suit of muscle armor.

He looked handsome.

She didn't want to reply to him just yet. She wanted to sit and listen to what he'd have to say while they were away from Haise. She thought he'd keep talking until they came back, or until she interjected. She could fill silence rather easily with awkwardness.

But he didn't say a word, and finally, when she saw the two boys approaching the table again, she had to ask Amon.

"Does Haise know?"

"No, I'd much prefer a life where the Rabbit died and I didn't have to sacrifice Haise's partner to accomplish that."

Whenever Touka heard someone talk like that in books, she imagined them with their hands curled up together, with a long tongue and a longer body quite like a snake. They were far more of an idea to her than anything physical.

Haise sat down next to her after she scooted over.

Those characters were far more the seed than the tree. But Amon was, different. His eyes were stone with soft marbles for pupils, and the rhythm of his voice was consistent. He'd never lie, to anyone, even her.

"No thanks, I don't really have a sweet tooth Juuzou… No really… hey stop that!"

This Amon felt far too different from the man she'd known before. The man who's partner she'd killed before was passive. He was, in essence, a lie, just like the rest of the humans.

He refused to see the monsters behind him when chasing the ones in front of him.

She finally felt Haise's hand on her shoulder then. She hadn't noticed it before, but when she felt the shaking for the first time, she realized it'd been going on for quite some time.

"What is it?"

"Amon asked you a question," Haise said.

"Sorry, I wasn't listening. Would you mind repeating, Amon."

She wasn't in the business of asking questions anymore. She felt Haise reel back in horror. He was a very comedic character, for being such a tragic fellow.

"No problem. I simply asked you to recap the files I gave you on the Nutcracker over the last few days. It'd be nice to get a refresher on everything we know so far," he said.

"Yea, I suppose I can do that,"

Touka was always very nervous when giving a speech in school, or when she had to read aloud a passage for the class.

_Why do I feel nervous now?_

"Well, things we know for sure about the Nutcracker are that she is quite fond of turning testicles into mush, and that she has a means of luring in male victims for both her own purposes and a human trafficking ring."

"Oi, my team figured that one out eh!" Juuzou said. There was a ring of chocolate from a doughnut around his mouth. She didn't want to cut her own throat then.

Until she thought about it.

"She's also very beautiful to the men surrounding her. Haise's team figured that out when they were trying to get involved with the human auction. In a club, or something."

"Ah what a fun day," Haise said. When she looked over, he didn't respond at all. He was lost in memory hidden between the cracks of the ceiling. She'd have to fix those.

"I expect to hear all about that when we're done here, Haise."

"OI, I love this story! Mr. Haise, tell us about why you're stuck on the bottom of the food chain again!" Juuzou said.

Haise food slipped down his throat all at once when he shook Juuzou off. Touka wondered what it was like, to slurp down food like that with no intention of throwing it up again later. There was no final music in that.

Why did he get to experience that? Dumb Haise.

"Anyway, go on Tomoe. I don't think we're finished just yet," Amon said.

She felt like she'd been scolded by a teacher. The back of her neck itched a little bit under her collar.

She elbowed Haise in the stomach.

"Yea, well we've also learned that she's part of a secret gourmet society that maintains a high level of security the CCG hasn't cracked yet. Juuzou's team observed her in hopes of catching bigger fish in both that society and maybe Aogiri."

"OI, plus, when Haise messed up that human auction we went to, she figured out who we are!" Juuzou said.

Touka laughed just a bit. Haise's eyes were nearly coming out of their sockets.

"Well, that's in the past. We just have to deal with the idea that two of our best investigators are going to work from behind the scenes this time. Whatever plan we use, will have to revolve around some combination of Tomoe and myself," Amon said.

_Fuck._

"Yea, well unless we find a way to lure her out without really having to approach her. That's a long play, but it could work."

_Thank you Haise. _

"Far too much time for us to invest Haise, we're going to get rid of the Nutcracker one way or another today. That requires us to press the issue. The inadequacies of the CCG have been made painfully clear to me by our inability to control a low-level ghoul who crushes testicles for a living," Amon said.

Juuzou nor Haise had much to say. For the first time, Touka saw Juuzou's eyes narrow into embarrassment. He was looking away, ignoring his doughnut. Haise looked straight into Amon. He agreed.

Touka herself was getting very nervous. This new investigator was changing the way the CCG played the game. He wasn't overthinking the situation, he was acting.

"The only way we're going to get the Nutcracker now without involving CCG forces and sacrificing lives is to appeal to the sadism embedded in her personality. Her blind spot is not being able to resist a ripe victim. That's the only way we'll get her alone, and we have to hope she hasn't preyed recently," Amon said.

Juuzou perked up.

"Mr. Amon, you're a genius! You'll be going in this time! Who doesn't want to crush your nuts?!"

Juuzou sounded like himself again.

"Yes, I'll be the bait, along with Tomoe over here. If I'm not her type at the moment, perhaps we can convince her Tomoe is. Though, I think I'll do quite alright alone," Amon said.

This is where Touka was afraid this conversation was going.

Amon hadn't been tied the post of a bed in quite a while. The muscle that connected with the metal of his right arm ached quite a bit from the pull of the rope.

He deserved that.

The experience the rope brought back scared him quite a bit, because it was uniquely positive.

He remembered the softest hands he'd ever felt around the girth of his chest. He could feel the nails through his suit jacket all over again.

The memory ended with the boots approaching from the hallway. He suddenly felt naked when she opened the door.

His chest was uncovered, his shirt pulled to the side to cover the metal of his arm. No matter how old he got, this was always uncomfortable.

Lying to a young girl was always uncomfortable.

When the door clicked, the post behind Amon bent in half.


	12. Preludio

**Preludio.**

Juuzou poked at the stitches on his tummy too keep occupied. The alley way behind :Re smelled like the mold in his sink at home. He tried not to breathe it.

He was worried about ruining the taste of the doughnut he'd just eaten, and he wondered if he could open up his stomach and take the food out for later. Was there a way he could stitch his food back together, wound up red and black sugar bread, like strips of licorice, sweet, and tied in?

Probably not.

But that wouldn't keep him from trying later.

Juuzou's nose picked up the sweat coming from Haise's skin, and he couldn't hold it in any longer; the smell of garbage and old coffee mixer cups dived in with human perspiration, spiraling down Juuzou's gullet. He couldn't live without the salt in Haise's sweat, so he lived with the garbage doughnut.

Juuzou didn't sweat much himself, and whenever he did, it smelled far more like sweet tea than salt. It wasn't very fun to sweat, because the smell of his own prespiration didn't correlate with the emotions he experienced inside.

The stress that sat on Juuzou's tongue now tasted delicious. Haise was nervous, extremely so, and it nearly smelt like blood.

"Oi, Haise, why the long face?"

Juuzou watched him throw up then, little streams of bile and chocolate treats slipping through the fingers that had been holding his mouth closed. There was some in a strand of his hair too.

He clamped the strand between two fingers, and sniffed.

"Wow Haise, your vomit is quite nasty. I can't even catch a whiff of the chocolate that you ate in here."

Haise grabbed him by the shirt, nearly missing fingering one of his stitches out of place. The bile felt warm through his shirt, gravitational as it pulled him closer to Haise.

"Tell me they're going to be alright, Juuzou. Tell me she'll be okay," he said.

"Oi, well, she doesn't have any balls. Who knows what will happen! It's supposed to be fun, Haise!"

There was a lie swimming around the garbage in his throat.

_This was indeed far more fun. Haise worrying._

"You're not really making me feel any better," he said.

Juuzou rubbed the top of Haise's head, hands in the coarse mess of black that covered his scalp. He wondered if his own black hair was coarse, or if it ran like melted chocolate through the spaces between his stitches.

"That's not really my job, Haise."

Haise vomited through his slippers and in between his toes.

Touka was bathing in awkwardness, a shower away from Amon in the CCG stalls. She could hear the metal of his arm squeak under the bristles of his brush, and it made her face burn under the cool of the shower water.

The CCG hadn't instituted a genderless shower system, she merely follow him without thought, and she had no idea what the plan was to get out of the stall without being seen.

"You know, investigator, now would be a good time to sneak out of here. It's just you and me in the stalls," he breathed out with the steam into her shower. She tasted the steam on her tongue, but it only made her shiver even more. To know heat was to need it.

"Yea, sure dumb ass, I'll just walk out of the men's showers nearly ass naked. Just because there's no one in here doesn't mean there's no one out there."

She heard the handles in his stall stop through the low roar of her own. All the heat that was escaping his stall made her ache; submerged in arctic waters as she was.

The slap of wet feet landed in front of her door, and she could see his toes in the light from outside her shower.

"What do you think you're doing? I'm not – "

A towel dropped over his toes, folded.

"I'll go give the people in the hall a distraction. I'll meet you in the front lobby in 20 minutes," he said.

"Wait, what exactly are going to do?"

She heard the door of the bathroom open, the sound of his feet meeting the wood floor outside.

"HELP ME FIND MY CLOTHES, SOMEONE STOLE THEM!" She could hear him from her stall, and all the people both yelling at and for him.

He was quite the spectacle.

Her own door clicked open, and she covered herself in the wool of his towel. She was on her way out when the steam he'd created ventured up her nostrils.

It was a mix of oil and something else she hadn't noticed while next door. Her eyes journeyed into the blackness.

There was a spatter of blood defacing the right side of the shower.

She smirked in silence, happy an investigator was suffering.

There was a shiver up the ridges of her spine.

She arrived in the lobby standing straight up, to say the least. She had wrapped her chest up in Haise's office, adding a wig over her tied up hair. She had to wear a large jacket to cover up her body, and in the mirror, she could only really read the face of a girl.

Her wig was purple, and it hurt quite a bit. The ribs on her left side ached.

She wondered what her insides looked like after the Centipede put a hole in her stomach. Were they whole now?

Amon was dressed in a white button-up, with black slacks and a jacket slung across his right shoulder. His eyes were stuck in another world just out the doors of the CCG, and she thought he looked every bit the part of the business man he was trying to portray.

The problem was that he also didn't like the sort of man to illicit the services of a prostitute. The ripples in his shirt and the fine leather that covered his right hand echoed a man with a beautiful wife and an extraordinary intelligence, or an extraordinary bank account.

When he did finally glance her way, he smiled, probably at the red marks on her neck thanks to the warmth of the wool jacket she had on and the heat from the outside.

She could smell the baking garbage in the alley behind her café home on her way over to Amon.

"Okay, you look quite perfect for the role Tomoe. The wig suits you just swell," he said.

"I'm not sure I understand how a purple wig is supposed to make me look more like a boy. A short wig doesn't exactly signal manhood to me."

"Well think in the larger picture Tomoe, one of us is going to be chosen by this Nutcracker. If she's attracted to the businessman, well then she'll choose me, and if she's attracted to a younger, more… hip man, she'll choose you. It's all pragmatic investigator," he said.

The words he said sat in the wax of her ear, ringing, "lame," throughout the bones in her body.

Perhaps he could play the part quite well, after all.

"You mean you're going to sell me like a scrawny punk boy to this place?"

"I suppose so, Tomoe. I know it's probably a little rough, but it's very likely that she'll choose you. From what I've seen in her aesthetics, at least," he said.

She felt her stomach beat stolen pulsations from her heart, confirming that her insides were, unfortunately, put together again after the Centipede. Blood kernels popped in and out her of guts, oil reserves gushing out of her pores.

She was terrified of having to meet the Nutcracker as an investigator. Touka's own fragrance was quite easy to discern even under the guise of strong cologne courtesy of Amon.

Coffee didn't mix well with, "Old Rustic South." And the human meat smell didn't help much either.

"If she does pick you, I'll know Tomoe. Do you know why I'll know?" he asked.

"Because you're a condescending, omnipotent prick?"

"Because you're going to click this if she walks through the door, and I'll make sure she doesn't squash your nonexistent balls," he said.

She felt ridges popping out of the plastic case in her hands. There was a little metal button hidden in the paws of a bunny charm on the bracelet tied around her wrist. Her cheeks heated, boiled even when she finished inspecting her new charm.

"Did I guess right?" he asked.

"About what? Do I like bracelets? No, I hate them, always have. And I don't need your help."

"About the bunnies, you like them, don't you?" he asked.

The doors of the CCG tapped together behind them, joining in the embarrassed laughter bouncing around Touka's head.

If the nerve endings in Amon's right arm weren't rammed into metal, he would have sworn to any passerby that he was dripping sweat into the leather glove on his hand.

He could forget the possibility that the Nutcracker would indeed choose Tomoe, and consequently, the Rabbit, by biting down on his lower lip and concentrating on the pain where his shoulder and prosthetic connected.

_What are the consequences of her dying?_

Haise's face popped into his mind, and he drew blood from his lower lip.

"So she works in this dump, huh?" Tomoe asked.

"I suppose so, though I don't find it all that surprising. I'm sure most investigators run away at the smell. I can't say I blame them."

There were chips of wood crunching under Amon's boots, disagreeing with the soft dampness on the back of his shirt. He couldn't find a shirt big enough these days; they were all destined to stick to his skin, much like bad coughs in lungs.

He just wanted to exhale.

Before he showed up at the CCG headquarters to see Akira, he'd gathered intel on possible locations for the Nutcracker to acquire victims for both an underground party and her own needs.

His favorite was a rundown building in the human slums of the first ward. Ghouls were known to frequent the place, not for food, but for particular jobs. Humans didn't have much problem taking what they wanted from ghouls in rundown hotel room beds. There was a sort of sick coexistence that flickered in Amon's head. At least here, ghouls weren't killed or really feared. They were explored.

If there was a place to take unsuspecting men, it was this one. It was normal for people to float into the ward slums and simply become part of its fabric, no different than chipped wood lying on the ground. He wondered how many men he was breathing in now, their existence now white smoke swirling out of burning pipes in burning buildings. Lives in flames, really.

"I guess the smell doesn't really bother me, investigator," she said.

He didn't hear any crunching from her feet at all; it seemed like she had a way of stepping over them instead of on them. It was graceful to watch, entirely different from the usual clunky, sharp flow of her movements. He remembered watching her fight the Centipede.

_Entirely different._

"Alright Tomoe, this is where we split. About 100 paces ahead is a large dark brown building. It'll smell far worse than the rot we're walking in right now."

He could see her shoulders perk up, slender rounds turned into jammed squares. They leaked nervousness like opiates in the air. He sighed.

"Just remember the bracelet on your wrist."

"I've got it, ass. This is just a more dangerous job than I expected my second week here," she said.

"I guess you know the wrong people, then. Luck gave you a shitty partner."

"I agree, more than you know Amon," she said.

He saw her click the volume button on her headphones. Haise and Juuzou were listening to her now. They'd probably screw it up.

Amon had to walk around the avenues surrounding the building's street for a long 10 minutes before approaching it again. He could play it off as mistaking Tomoe for a girl then, that that was his type. He made sure Tomoe had worn leather pants to back his story up.

When he finally approached the entrance, he could still smell the coffee Tomoe left behind in the shit and grime he breathed in. She was easily recognizable, especially for a ghoul of slightly higher class like the Nutcracker.

He felt the building shift when he walked in, his physical size nearly outweighing the hotel itself. He knew exactly where he had to go, thanks to a ghoul informant he'd transferred out of an execution hold into a slum, and the path there felt familiar. Ghouls were quite good at recounting things, less great storytellers and more painters of the world. They could make a man taste the splinters on which he'd walk with their words. They never lied when they started these paintings, either.

They knew they were good at it. They were proud.

When he knocked on a door to a room on the second floor, he felt his lungs crammed into his throat, and his mouth burst open for air. His ribs hurt, and his eyes slacked; nervous, for just a moment. He licked his lower lip when he heard the knob turn from the inside.

Completely healed.

A boy opened the door, and for the first time in quite a while, anger boiled in the pit of his insides, burning little openings for steam into the wall of his stomach. He squeezed the kid's shoulder with his left hand, more a reassurance for Amon than the kid. He needed something to keep going.

Instead of a room, there was a long hallway ending in a perpendicular line of doors. There were long windows to his left and right, leading to the rooms, tinted to keep the eyes on the other side hidden.

The prostitutes picked him, not the other way around. He felt the back of his shirt before moving forward.

Completely dry.

When he reached the end of the hallway, little slivers of rotting wood left in the red and blue carpet behind him, he was met with a small woman covered head to toe in leather.

He could only make out the brown of her hair behind the hide that masked her face, and she pulled him gently towards a room at the far end of the hall.

The room itself smelled sweet, soft in the nose like skin. He felt warm nail polish on his chest, hands soothing the aches trapped in the marrow of his bones to sleep. It was entirely professional.

The aid in leather would tie him to a bedpost before leaving.


	13. Intermission

Detective Ghoul

**A/N: Hey there to any readers I may still have! So as a quick intro, I've been busier than I possibly could have imagined for the last month, working on a project. I've just finished, and I miss writing for Detective Ghoul, so I've written a quick intermission chapter for you guys. After I settle back into the story, I'll be posting the next chapter. But until then, enjoy this little short.**

SHORT- Middle of the Book.

Touka wanted to hit her head against the metal pole in-between her train seat and the one over every time a chip crunched in Haise's mouth.

She both wanted to throw up and have some herself. Cinnamon crisps sounded interesting.

"Are you sure you don't want some?" he asked.

While the strands of her black hair stuck to the sweaty pores of her forehead, her stomach sweated even more at the idea that she could actually accept said chips.

She rubbed her stomach.

She didn't know why it worried so much; the thought of taking the chips made her remember trying to read out loud from a book for the first time in class.

"I don't want your chips god damnit. How close are we?" she said.

Touka heard the click of heels from her counterpart on the other side of the pole. Where an elder lady had sat, the heavy air of Touka's foul mouth lingered.

Haise laughed a little, and that was perfectly okay, sans the little bit of weight that sat in the bottom of her gut. She didn't want to scare away people.

"You know, you're a real keeper Tomoe. Nobody tries to sell me things whenever we go out," he said.

"On a job," she said.

"What?" he asked.

"You said whenever we go out. Finish it. Whenever we go out on a job. I don't want anybody getting the wrong idea," she replied. She'd never said anything like that before. The cool of the metal bottom of the seat that snuck through the seams of her jeans onto the skin of her calves made her feel confident.

"Uh-huh. Anyway, you're really not all that familiar with trains, are you? We're about 30 minutes away, eh," he said.

The cold that made her confident was like an icebox now, cubes clogging up her throat. More specifically, her head hurt.

"We've already been riding for 30 minutes," she said.

"It's been 10 minutes," he replied.

"You make it seem longer, I suppose. You're like the beginning of a book," she said.

She always enjoyed the beginning of books. Characters were untainted; clean people she could hold in the palms of her hands.

"The beginning of books are the best, you know. You see people before they become what they're supposed to be. It makes the ending much sweeter," he said.

"What if they end up worse off? What if they change?" she asked.

He rubbed the bottom of his chin while looking out the window in front of them.

She didn't dare look at him, but she could hear the stubble rubbing against the smooth skin on his index finger.

She didn't cry, but she wondered if that finger would feel damp on the red skin of her cheek.

"I guess I've never thought of it that way. Perhaps it works in both ways, then. Maybe a bad ending makes the memory of a normal beginning taste like cinnamon crisps," he said.

The corner of her eye caught the curve of his lips, before a little bit of sun burned through the window and made her wince.

"That's pretty stupid. Why would I read a book if it has a sad ending? Anyway, maybe we should just shut up until we get there. I think I'd rather talk to this pole than you," she said.

"You don't seem like the type of person who would like sad books. I think you're too nice of person for that. Hence why that pole finds it so easy to converse with you," he replied.

A sock to his right arm echoed a laugh through their empty car, sans the woman who she'd scared off now.

It was quite a while before he said anything.

Not that she didn't want to say anything, but the pole next to her had a way of stealing her words through an unwavering eye-contact.

"I hope we don't run across any ghouls today. The last time wasn't very fun," he said.

"I think this pole would make a better investigator than you, Haise," she replied.

"I'd like to say that this is what it feels like to want to avoid an investigator, but, I don't think I'll ever be able to comprehend that. It must be terrifying," he said.

She had to look now, because he hadn't replied to her at all. He spoke into the air, clean language purifying the stale air around the seat next to her.

He lips continued to smile, much like the beginning pages of a book. She wanted to believe the obvious inauthenticity of it.

His eyes were closed, and his head rested against the metal wall of the train. He must of have kept them closed, because she was much too nice to see the sad ending to the happy beginning of his smile.

"But you know, we can think about all the lives we'll save on the human side today!" he said.

His hand was locked around her shoulder, not with a question that he wanted her to affirm, but with resolve.

She thought about the humans she could save.

And then she thought about the ghouls she wanted to save.

"Let go," she said.

The speed by which he dropped his hand made it feel much like Haise was now reading a newspaper on the other side of the train.

She imagined that he had quite the funny mask on his face from a gizmo store they had passed by on the way to the train station from the CCG.

A voice broke through her funny glasses vision.

"Hey Tomoe, we're almost there. What a quick trip, eh?"


	14. Let's Binge Again

**Let's Binge Again**

Amon continued to sweat while he checked the eyes of the girl in front of him. They hadn't shifted at all.

He wondered if she heard the bending of the post behind him. How could she not have? Somewhere, in an adjacent room, Tomoe was probably cursing at him for blowing their cover.

"My, the big boy's that eager, eh?"

The young woman dressed in leather that bounced off the wooden door frame behind her seemed to blend in perfectly with the case file pictures of the Nutcracker in his mind. That was just the problem.

He was neither sure that this was the Nutcracker, or that it wasn't. Perhaps his age was wearing on him, or so it felt.

"Would you mind introducing yourself?" he asked.

Maybe she'd give herself away in overconfidence.

"Well, maybe I'll tell you at the end of our little dance," she replied.

No such luck.

The easiest way out of the situation would seemingly be to simply pull the post out of the ground and study her reaction. But, upon more careful assessment, both the Nutcracker and a normal prostitute, ghoul or human, would run away. He wouldn't gain any sort of advantage from that, and in the time he wasted chasing down a potential human, Tomoe would be in some serious danger.

He'd have to talk his way out of this.

"I prefer to know the names of the women I sleep with," he said.

"Oh I doubt that. You don't seem like that sort of pig," she said.

"Men with courtesy are pigs now, huh?" he asked.

He watched her unhook several leather belts from her shoulders just a few feet away from him. It must have been a pain to assemble all that together, just to take it off.

"No, men with courtesy are beautiful things I love. But this isn't a place full of courtesy, and certainly not love. I don't need men to feign interest in knowing who I am, nor do I really have any interest in knowing who they are," she said.

The twinge of nerve rammed into metal stopped, and sweat cooled under his chin. His body listened to both the microscopic bang of gold leather clips on the floor and her words.

"Inside this room, I would rather not live as myself. Walking in here is like inhaling and leaving is exhaling. You and I are the seconds in between. Men who don't respect that are pigs," she said.

"You read like poetry," he said.

"I imagine you don't read much," she replied.

"You seem to enjoy reading me," he said.

"You make it easy. And I quite like it," she quipped.

Strands of his hair floated down, in front of his eyes. He felt young, like the Amon who had yet to complete his academy training.

The room calmed his mind but twirled his soul back through time.

"You're assuming I don't like leather, I see," he said.

"No, that's not it at all, I just imagine this is going to be one long inhale," she replied.

Those words felt like I slap across the face from an incapacitated blonde woman lying in a hospital bed.

"You know I have a girlfriend," he said.

"No you don't," she replied, "and even if you did I don't think either of us would really care."

He boots clicked their way over to him.

He couldn't waste any more time, he knew that. Either his balls were about to be squashed, or Tomoe was about to be had in some other room.

But he sat still, the metal of his arm tied back to the post. He was letting the answer come to him.

A beeping noise that emanated from his metal arm both awoke him from his trance and startled the woman in front of him.

Touka heard Haise's voice run on from the moment she walked into the hotel, to her current position, tied to a bed post.

It was a slightly warming feeling, though, in the face of perhaps meeting the Nutcracker again.

She was an unreasonable woman, and it made Touka's stomach churn to think about having to use her words and not her strength to convince the Nutcracker that there was in fact a CCG investigator rooms way.

She wondered if she had all the words she needed for the situation. Her vocabulary felt underwhelming, lacking in sharpness and proper poignancy.

Maybe if she listened to Haise run on through her earpiece, she could find the words she needed. She found comfort in all the books he read, confident in his fingers running across the withered pages full of words she could use if he'd just say them.

When the door clicked open, she was relieved that a shorter, thicker woman than the Nutcracker walked in.

"You know, I think I've changed my…"

She was interrupted by several strips of duct tape that wound over her mouth.

The woman gave Touka a squeeze on the shoulder. There was pity in the blackness of her eyes, and a dampness that seemed to eminate off her cheeks.

The tape told Touka why the woman was crying, and normally, she would have been angry.

But all Touka could feel for the woman who pitied her was pity in return.

When the woman let go, she left, giving a final somber smile before closing the door.

Now she wished she had talked to Haise. He continued to ramble in her ear, about their time together, about all bad guys they'd catch in the future. Even a little about Akira, their boss. Why he brought that up, she didn't know.

He seemed incoherent, and it was quite sad to think that there was no way of him knowing she was actually staring a pretty likely death in the face.

She was RC inhibited, and the Nutcracker finding out she was quite the blue-balled individual, to the extreme, wasn't going to make for a pretty sight.

As she heard boots step in heavy rhythm outside her door, drawing closer, she found herself increasingly more pleased with the situation, though.

She'd rather he keep talking like this for as long as possible, before he heard the tussle. She liked listening to him this way, because he didn't sound worried at all; he felt calm.

That didn't make her fearless, but it made her fear less.

"Well, I've talked for quite a while. I imagine you're going to be wrapping up the mission soon, so I'll shut up now eh," he continued.

She smiled with the steps being just a few seconds away. She felt the charm on her wrist, and laughed a little. If she clicked it, Amon might save her, but, that would mean killing the Nutcracker. She'd be responsible.

She started to let go of the charm.

"Just make sure, well, that you'll kick my ass again, okay, Touka?" he asked.

Touka drifted into a coldness that erupted like a pit in her chest. Her soul was many things at once, a cold blackness, hot like a volcano, and empty like a pit. It was like ash, in fact.

She wanted desperately in that moment not to ask how, or why he had said Touka, and not Tomoe, but to simply speak. She wanted to speak to the boy with books, but her mouth was shut.

So she pressed her fingers, hard, into the button on the bunny charm bracelet. This way, Kaneki would stop talking, and Haise would come back. She couldn't listen to Kaneki talk if she couldn't reply back. It didn't feel natural.

"Tomoe? Tomoe? What's happening?!" he asked.

She tilted her head back, a painful reentry into normality.

More painful was the fact that it was not the Nutcracker who opened the door, but a rather bony young woman who couldn't make eye contact with her.

She was a ghoul that Touka knew. One who made Touka glad she pressed the button.

Amon dragged the pole behind him, and past the woman who stood shoulders shrugged. He couldn't look her in the eyes before he left; sure he wanted to save time, but, looking her in the eyes would have made him feel even more like a pig than he already was.

The beep grew louder as he came closer to Tomoe's signal, which was directly ahead of him.

The room he entered burned the insides of his nose, a mix of salty sweat and blood that singed through and into his eyes.

He couldn't speak and he moved slowly. Tomoe was only a few feet in front of him, but she seemed miles away.

He discovered here why no one got in his way as he ran down the hallway. Perhaps they wanted him to enter the room at the end of the hall.

They wanted him to see the sickly paste that acted like skin over the ridges of a spine and points of hips that belonged to the ghoul in front of him.

The bones in her shoulder covered most of Tomoe's body, but her eyes begged for his help. He didn't feel pity; he felt overwhelmed by her agony.

The ghoul turned around as he moved closer. Her jaw lax, inhumanly so, like the mouth of a wood-chipper. Behind her head, Amon saw Tomoe's left arm hanging like the end of a cheap yoyo.

"What the hell are you?" he asked.

"Well they call me the Binge Eater, cutie," she replied.


	15. Ghoul and Pity

Ghoul and Pity

Touka felt her mind stir with the sound of an engine pounding, and asphalt burning straight into her nose. She felt a pinch in her right arm, and not much of anything in her left.

The left was always more trustworthy. Durable.

There were straps that rubbed against the skin of her knees, and then the air danced on top of her tummy skin. She wasn't wearing very much at all anymore. That mission must have been one fun dance.

There was a time that Yoshimura made her go to the dentist right before she entered school for the first time. She licked her lips, now, remembering the taste of those hands in her mouth when an older gentlemen looked around inside.

It turned out that she had a few "impacted," wisdom teeth that needed to come out. So she was put to sleep a few days later. It was quite like flossing a sleeping lion's teeth, she thought.

Waking up now was much like that experience; she was crying, and she could feel that on her cheek, but on the inside, she felt pretty good. Happy, really, that she'd finished her mission.

The pinch on her right arm was eerily similar, too. But she didn't want to sleep anymore.

"Don't move, Tomoe," Kaneki said.

"Oi, Kaneki, shut up and take the IV out of my arm. Yoshimura needs me back at the shop," she replied.

"It's Haise, and there's no IV in your arm," he said. It was all nonsense.

"My left arm isn't working, stupid Kaneki. Just take it out," she said back.

"Yea, I guess I'll help then, eh," he replied.

The pinch left. It was more like a pressure, now that she thought about it.

"You should really get that arm of yours checked, silly," he said.

"I just got my wisdom teeth out, what more do you want from me, eh?" she said.

"Your cheeks are gonna balloon right up, you know that eh, Tomoe?" he replied.

"What do you keep calling me" she tried to say.

She felt a jolt, the hum of the engine and the smell of asphalt bending out of harmony.

The back of her head hurt when she smashed into her gurney.

She remembered feeling the leather of Yoshimura's backseat when they were nearly home, for the first time since they got in the car.

"Haise, where the hell are we?"

"We're in the back of an ambulance, dumb ass," the body to her left said.

She looked to the right, because she was scared of whatever was on the left.

Haise was there, like she imagined he would be, though, the tips of his fingers were glued to the ends of hers. There were white patches on her red skin where he'd held on before.

_Why would I need an IV, anyway?_

The ends of Haise's fingers shifted, cupping the left side of her face when she mustered the courage to look over.

"You really shouldn't look over there, Amon's half-naked," he said.

She tried to get angry, she tried to smirk and she even tried to laugh, but his eyes remained unchanged.

_Why were his eyes so pitiful_?

"I'm disgusted to admit that I've already burned my eyes with the sight," she said.

He relented. She wanted to feel the heat from the outside world through the patches of red skin on his neck. She imagined it was hot under his suit jacket. Sweaty, even.

But right now, his skin was pale like paper.

When she turned her face away, she saw Amon, hunched over, but sitting up on his gurney. His right arm was deconstructed, or rather, chewed down, to a metal stump.

"The Tin Man's falling apart, eh Amon?" she asked.

She waited for a while, to hear some snarky remark that she'd digest for strength. She felt very weak in that moment.

But she got nothing.

When he did finally respond, it wasn't with the sharpness of his tongue, or with a flippant hand; no, what she got was much worse. He could look at her, but not into her eyes. His eyes seemed swallow her entire being, his pupils like black pits of sorrow. Her throat swelled.

"You're a real depressing guy, you know that, Amon. You're always dampening the mood," she said.

What else could she say?

"We're in the back of an ambulance," he replied.

Now she did let out quite the laugh. It was a rather funny thing, to cheer Amon up.

It was only when she went back to yell at Haise for touching her hand that the heat of embarrassment left her cheeks.

Where the hell was her left arm?

* * *

><p>Amon appreciated the sharp points of every tooth embedded in his left shoulder at the moment. It made the pain in his right side seem dull, like burning asphalt on an uncovered foot.<p>

"You taste really good, you know that investigator?" the ghoul said.

Amon watched the ghoul in front of him as she picked pieces of flesh out of her newly grown teeth. She licked the leftovers off her fingertips.

He didn't know if the blood on her chin was his own, or hers, hidden just under the skin.

"You've got pretty fast regenerative powers, eh ghoul?" he asked.

"You've got some rather tough flesh, pretty boy. I'll need as many teeth as I can get to eat you up," she replied.

His eyes stung, and his vision was like a sweaty camera lens making it so he could barely keep track of Tomoe. She took more blood than he thought.

He didn't expect her to be so fast with a brittle frame like she had.

"Well, I'm going to go ahead and guess that I've only got a minute or so left with you before some sort of help arrives. That's quite disappointing," she said.

"You'll be seeing a lot of me from the glass of your cell," he replied.

"I don't think I have time yet to enjoy you, but I want something to remember you by, my love. The one that got away, you'll haunt me until next time," she replied.

His insides shifted under the pressure of her words.

When Amon moved to punch through the mist in his eyes, towards the ghoul, his face could only register a smirk. Sheer relief.

This new binge eater rubbed his cheeks while she walked past him, even wiping away some of the sweat in his right eye.

"This metal arm of yours just won't do if it falls apart so easy, you know sweetie?" she asked.

There was a sour taste in his throat. Being pitied by someone else was quite the humbling experience. It made his gut burn, like smoking morning toast. He wasn't groggy enough not to notice.

"Till next time, eh?" she said.

"You know, I'm not sure Rize's going to be happy when she finds out what you've been doing," he said.

"It's a good thing she's dead, right?" she asked.

There was an understood fear between the both of them. Before he saved Tomoe, and before this mysterious ghoul left, they shared in a brief inhalation.

"Can't you taste her, wherever you walk, whenever you eat? The heat of her throat, and the purple of her lipstick on the end of my fingertips; we're being swallowed as we speak. I'd be careful, eh," he said.

He felt her leave. Hopefully, farther into Rize's throat.

He also felt the room spin, as blood ran down his leg, swimming at Olympic speeds towards his feet. Blood felt soft in his socks. Bloody socks were comforting, though wet socks were generally annoying and pricked his skin. He remembered how much he hated tube socks. His feet felt trapped.

He also remembered how much he hated being trapped inside a tube before he hit the floor.

_ETO says WAKE UP Mr. Amon! Hurry, HURRY!_

Shut up, Eto.

* * *

><p>The tips of her fingers felt as normal as he'd ever imagined them to be. Whenever he saw, or rather felt, them, her skin was rough, worn like the dull knives in Haise's old household utensil drawers.<p>

He felt the inside of that drawer, and even the knife itself, but he couldn't picture how it looked in his mind.

_Irrelevant. _

Her nails were softer than her skin, and he imagined them like extensions of the bones in her hands.

In the past, he'd considered the soul to be buried deep in the marrow of one's bones. It existed separate from the outside world in some fictional away, a lie that it could hide beneath. Really, he found that if one broke a bone, the marrow separated right along with it.

Her nails were a little chipped, so he held onto those cracked spots.

"Haise, where is my arm?" she asked.

He didn't feel any urgency in her voice. It was soft, but thick like orange juice. It took him a little while to digest.

"Well, you know, I think it just got tired of you," he replied.

He closed his eyes and bit his lip. The punch was coming, and he could feel it. His nose would bleed for a few hours, and it'd be sore for much longer. Maybe all the dirt on her knuckles would make his skin break out. What a steep price he was willing to pay.

The punch never came.

"Who took it off?" she asked.

"There was a ghoul. Amon says she was pretty strong. Way stronger than the Nutcracker. Someone we've never heard of," he replied.

"Great," she said. Haise saw her smile back into sleep. The sleeping medication was going in and out. It'd be like that until they got to the hospital.

"All that trouble, and she just goes back to sleep, eh Haise? What a pain in the ass." Amon said.

"She's going to want an arm likes yours," he said.

"Yea, well I've got a better idea. She deserves more than something like this piece of crap," Amon replied.

There was an unbridgeable distance between Amon and Haise, and he noticed it just then. There was a gap, filled with time, hardened like milk. It was like the universe disagreed with their coexistence.

He supposed his mind was playing tricks on him, again.

"I'm sorry this happened, Haise. It was my shitty decision to-"

"Why are we here, Amon? What made you go to that hotel?" Haise asked.

"Like I said,"

"And what made Juuzou and I stay behind? Why were you bent on doing this _your_ way?" he asked.

"It was clearly the best way to get a chance at taking the Nutcracker alive," Amon replied.

Haise hands dropped from Tomoe's.

"Then I don't give a shit if you're sorry or not. And you shouldn't give a shit about being sorry. You made a decision, and we'll live with it. She'll live with it," Haise said.

"I made the wrong decision," Amon said.

"You know, sometimes I envy ghouls. I know it's terrible, but, it feels like they've got something that you and I are lacking, beyond strength of the body. It's like, they always know exactly what to do," Haise replied.

"I guess you've got a point there," Amon said.

Haise wondered if Amon could hear him, across the cavern that divided them.

"It seems all you and I can do is make decisions. There's no way of knowing if we're making the right ones or not, and life has a twisted way of making the decisions that feel the worst the correct ones," he said.

Haise leaned his head against the side of the ambulance, and stuck his feet into the space between the two men. His hand rested just out of reach of Tomoe's fingers, bumping farther away as the ambulance started to slow down.

* * *

><p>Juuzou followed the bony woman through back alleys. She smelled fresh, unknown. The girl wrapped in bandages who walked next to her smelled good, familiar. She smelled better than his favorite candy.<p>

Wait, why did he know she was a girl?

_Fun._


End file.
